Igor began to spin around his own body, looking for Eduarda and feeling that the ground was taken from his feet when he saw that his bride had disappeared. He took a deep breath to lower the adrenaline that had formed and tried to calm down. He went to where she fell, on the edge of the street and looked around again, but she left no traces, as if she had evaporated.

Considering that the street had been empty after the shooting, the fiancee must have been far away. He began to walk slowly, trying to identify where she had run, looking for some energy flow, but the task was complicated a little because he needed to keep his concentration on two things: his protection and her location.

A few seconds later, two cars turned the nearest corner and blocked the street. The police got out of their pistols in hand, using the cars as shields and one of them shouted through a megaphone:

"Police. Drop the weapons and put your hands on your head."

Igor turned to the side and kept his personal barrier active, showing his bare hands as if saying that he was not involved in the shooting. Then, ignoring the authorities, he continued to walk in search of a sign of her, still without success. From the third street, which forked with the one of the accident that caused, came another car with the sirens screaming, climbing the sidewalk and advancing on him. Igor did not waste time and just raised his hand in the direction of the car that stopped with a very violent impact, as if it had collided with an invisible concrete wall. The front of the vehicle was destroyed, but the police had only minor injuries. As they got out and crouched, protected by the doors and pointing their guns, the policemen of the first wave fired at the wizard, who continued to think where he should start looking for Eduarda. The weapons, with the incessant shots, bothered him a little because of the noise and Igor made a sign with his hand. The police, bewildered and frightened, discovered that they had snakes in their hands instead of revolvers. Screaming, they threw them to the ground and ran away from that madness.

The young man did the math and calculated that Eduarda would have, at most, a six hundred meter lead, if she had run in a straight line, but, even so, that distance implied an area of respect. Several citizens filmed everything with their phones and, despite the urgency and anguish he felt to save Eduarda, he managed to smile when he imagined what they would think when they discovered that the images would be impossible to distinguish. Going back to thinking about his fiancee, he concluded that the best way to find her was by air, since the sight would reach much further.

Having made the decision, he did not care what the others would say or do and just let himself rise, floating like a balloon in front of the astonished look of all the passers-by. He went up and flew in wider circles, forming a spiral. About two hundred meters high he stopped the ascent and began to look for his bride, at first in the direction that he thought was the best choice for her. He found out in a short time that he was wrong and his concern became much greater because, every minute that passed, the size of the area to be searched increased and the risk of Samuel catching her.

He went back to flying in circles that widened gradually and, in another direction, he saw in the distance a person walking with great difficulty, clutching his abdomen. Despite the distance, it seemed to be Eduarda and he was very scared to think that she might have been shot. He made a quick dive and flew across to meet her face to face and not give her a huge scare.

He landed on the corner with his heart jumping and the adrenaline loose, approaching almost running. It was indeed Eduarda, who was so bad that she did not react to seeing him, fainting in his arms.

With great care, Igor picked up the girl in his lap and transported himself to his apartment, depositing the body on the bed. He checked the vital signs and was frightened, because her life was hanging by a thread and was draining with excessive speed.

He concentrated on Eduarda's organism, feeling all the vital-energy flow, trying to locate the reason why she was at death's door and seeing several ionic interruptions.

He held her hand with great care, as he did the first time when he freed her from the drug, and a light blue luminescence began to emanate from his body from the limb, spreading slowly throughout the fiancee's body.

With that, he freed her from the deadly toxin, but she would need a lot of rest to recover because she was at the limits of exhaustion. In this way, he put her in a state of sleep so deep that it would not differ from an induced coma, however, what worried him most was the risk of being found by the creature.

As Valdo had said, Eduarda was almost unrecognizable, very thin and with dark circles that she never had before. Igor looked at his beloved, impressed by her condition, although he thought she was still the owner of a transcendental beauty.

He turned to the window and thought about what he should do next, since it should be a matter of time until that demon of Samuel found him.

― ☼ ―

Eduarda looked at the flowers, huge fields with beautiful flowers of all kinds and sizes. Happy, she walked barefoot, feeling the contact of the earth with her feet and, in the next step, the scenery changed and she found herself in the middle of a frightening battle. She wielded a sword and shouted wildly, running accompanied by more a bunch of simple people who used only forks and agricultural tools as weapons. Her sword shone and, in the other hand, a gigantic ball of fire formed, a red and intense fire like the Sun. She should have been carbonized by the fiery sphere, but nothing happened. As she ran, the girl threw the ball with all her strength, hitting the enemy army and causing a devastating explosion. The flames galloped in her direction, devouring everything along the way while from behind her ranks, she heard a desperate and anguished scream that said: "Ailin." The holocaust generated, even more violent than Napalm, hit her with such violence that she could only say a simple word, murmured in the midst of a painful and almost eternal longing: "Igor."

However, instead of feeling death consume her, Eduarda saw herself in a place as beautiful as she had never imagined. A hill of granitic rock full of random and uneven platforms that contained more than a hundred small waterfalls that met in lakes. These platforms had, in addition to the lakes that were true natural pools, trees that even resembled large bonsais of various shapes, crystalline bridges and constructions made, in general, of multicolored crystals. The lakes surrounded everything and went down in new waterfalls where, among them, small asymmetrical crystal buildings and harmonious with the place seemed to defy gravity and fight for the same space, but maintaining an unparalleled balance. Her feet were on the edge of a larger lagoon that reflected the sunlight in thousands of small bright diamonds and was where all the smaller waterfalls ended in a large half circle. She felt a wave of immense happiness and turned to look around, finding more similar structures. Her eyes sparkled and she stopped spinning when she saw him, for there he was with a rosebud in his hands, red as always, his knight dressed in white and a shiny sword at his waist, who looked at her smiling with his beautiful gray eyes. Ecstatic, Eduarda uttered a simple word modulated in a smile of pure happiness:

"Igor," she wispered, as she turned in bed and that small gesture in the middle of the dream was enough to wake her up. She opened her eyes and tried to get up, scared, but she was too weak and just sat down. She looked around, seeing that it was not her bed nor the room was in the mansion that she hated so much.

Still sitting, she saw leaning out the window and back the same man in white who attacked the security guards. She put her feet on the floor, feeling the cold floor that caused her a strong shiver. The man turned and Eduarda looked at him from head to toe. All the clothing was white, with a cape also white and, at the waist, a golden sword, shining in a red scabbard all drawn with pagan symbols just like in the dream, but, when she saw the face, she had a startle. Afraid and angry at the same time, she began:

"God damn it, Samuel! You have everything you want, wealth, power, everything. You used and deceived me, but your tricks don't work anymore. Even though you married me by force, I never passed a facade. Why don't you leave me alone? Why do you have to use the appearance of the only man I loved and that you killed, on top of that disguised as a charming prince? Let me go or I will kill myself right here and now. Without him, my life makes no sense. You have already won, now let me go to die with dignity."

"There were many days when I thought I would never see you again, my love," Igor replied, moved, "and seeing you alive and close to me was the most beautiful gift that the Goddess gave me."

"Now are you going to play the emotional one?" Eduarda asked, much more energetic. "There is no way to deceive me anymore, Samuel. Your tricks have lost their effect—"

"Eduarda, my love." The young wizard approached her and took her hands. "It's me, Igor. He didn't kill me. He almost did, but he didn't kill me and I came back to get you and save you."

She did not let go of his hands in the hope that it was true, but she was very confused and frightened.

"How will I know that it is not a hoax?" she asked with great care, still worried. "I saw you attack the security guards with rays from your hands and only Samuel knows how to do that. My Igor was a 100% normal guy and the sweetest man in this world. Everything he did was to please me, something you never did, never."

"Yeah, it was also hard to convince Valdinho, but it didn't take long. My love, do you remember the night that demon kidnapped you from our home?"

"I remember," she replied, skeptical. "It's been three days since I remember everything and every hour that passes things are clearer. Don't even try to fool me, Samuel."

"Do you remember that I said I had a somewhat obscure past and that it was time for you to know?" he asked with a smile. "Well, Eduarda, I can do all that, yes, but I didn't have time to tell you because that black demon arrived first."

Eduarda calculated that Samuel would not be able to know that, since it was before the kidnapping happened. Wishing very much that it was true, she looked into his eyes and all the doubts disappeared when Igor opened his hand and handed her a rose, the gift he most liked to give her and something Samuel never did.

She began to tremble and tears ran loose from her eyes, rolling down her thin and tired face of suffering. She gave a sob and pulled his hands to her lips, kissing them with all the sweetness and then sticking her body to his in a tight hug, while she began to cry non-stop.

"You are alive, my sweetheart," Eduarda said in the midst of hugs and kisses. Her voice was low, almost whispered. "How I missed you."

When they calmed down and just looked at each other, caressing their hands or face, Igor asked, since they couldn't waste much time:

"Eduarda, did you take any poison yesterday?"

"No. I ran away to do that, but I didn't have time," she replied, curious. "Why? I remember I started to feel very sick—"

"Well, my princess, you fainted in my arms and cleaning your body of the toxin was much harder than with the college drug."

"But how?"

"I believe he preferred your death to you escaping, so he found a way to poison you and you would die in great agony if you stayed away from him for a certain period of time, but that devil knows that I can heal you and his greatest desire is my destruction and my suffering, so we have to get out of here, because he can follow our tracks."

"And where do you intend to go?"

"We will create a maze for him to get lost. With that I intend to earn at least a month. Can you get up?" asked the groom, smiling. "I know you are very weak, but we need to get out of here as soon as possible."

Eduarda tried to get up, but she was so dizzy that Igor picked her up in his lap. He walked to the bathroom and opened the portal in the shower box, crossing it and closing it right away. He noticed that he crossed the portal very easily, something unusual when taking someone who was not a wizard and that intensified the memory of what Ezequiel had said more than once about her. They still heard the door being broken down, but it was too late for the captors, if they were not with Samuel. The exit of the portal was in one of the houses he rented and he did not stop there, changing rooms and opening the way to another of the houses. Igor entered and left at least three times in each house and then went to the site he bought. There, he opened a passage to another world, but before he threw a plasma ball at the shack, which caught fire and took care to leave enough energy for it to burn for three or four days.

From then on, the passages were always by other planes in different worlds. Wide-eyed, Eduarda saw the successive places where they entered and left, each one more different than the other.

"Wow!" exclaimed the girl, "that story in college of multiple planes and subatomic particles etcetera was true?"

"Yes, my beautiful." Igor smiled. "I wanted to show you something more, but little by little and I didn't like to hide the truth from you, even before we dated."

More than once she noticed that Igor returned to the same place as before, creating a feeling of vicious circles capable of even confusing a sniffer dog, but the place that left her almost breathless of how beautiful it was was the Crystal World.

"My God, my dreams!" she muttered.

"What?" asked Igor, distracted and already in another world.

"That beautiful place," she replied, "I dreamed of it and of you there, many times, even before I met you!"

"One day you will see better and closer, sweetheart, the most beautiful city in the whole known Universe, but now there is no time. The next will be the last portal, that I'm very tired."

When she realized, they were back on Earth. Eduarda did not know if it was really the Earth, since they had been in several green and beautiful worlds as hers, but deep down she felt that it was. Without resisting, she asked:

"Are we on Earth, right, my love?" she smiled, hugging his neck and happy. "I feel it."

"Yes, we are," he confirmed. "Here is the Itaimbézinho, near the cabin of the man who saved me from death. At the moment he is in another world, but I know he won't mind if I borrow it. Maybe I should have gone straight there, but I prefer the isolation to take care of you."

He had just finished speaking, they arrived at the clearing of the cabin, which had been left as they left. When they were going to enter, Eduarda pointed out something written next to the door.

"That, they are runes!" she said, amazed, "I played with them when I was younger, but this ones are very different."

"It is the alphabet of the ancestral language, also known as Celtic and not runes. We wizards use this language when we want others not to know. The funny thing is that you shouldn't see them, because they are invisible to normal people."

"And what is written there?" she asked, curious, as Igor sat her in the rocking chair. "I saw it very clearly, so much that I would be able to transcribe it."

"It is a welcome message for other wizards," replied the groom, "so they will know what to find here."

Igor approached the fireplace and put several logs of firewood inside. When he finished, he stretched his finger and made a ray come out that lit the fire. Then he took a bowl and held it with both hands. When he let go, a thin smoke came out of it, accompanied by a delicious smell of soup.

"Here, eat this soup that will do you good," he extended the bowl, materialized a blanket on her feet and legs to warm her, adjusting it with great care. He continued, saying. "You know, Ezequiel says that the probability of you being a dormant sorceress is very high and I'm starting to believe it. Take the soup that I'm going outside to prepare some traps in case the disguise was not effective. I'll be right back."

Igor left, leaving a luminous globe for her not to be in the dark, since it dusk very fast. About ten minutes later, he came back inside bringing a red rose that he handed her, smiling.

When she stopped kissing him, Igor looked at the bed that had been his. Eduarda began to observe together and saw that the bed increased in width, becoming a double bed. Igor picked up his fiancee in his lap and took her to bed. Without knowing how, in the middle of the way she discovered herself dressed in a very comfortable and soft pajamas, made of the purest silk.

"Now, let's both sleep, because I also got tired of opening so many portals in a row," he said with a delicate smile. "Not to mention that you are very weak and need a lot of rest. Tomorrow is another day and we will see the rest."

"Good night, my sweet," said Eduarda, "I love you."

"I love you too, my princess," he kissed her again, satisfied and relieved. "I missed you so much, but now things are in their place and I will find a way to keep them that way."

Eduarda did not pay much attention to the end, she just snuggled up on groom's shoulder and fell asleep immediately. Smiling, Igor gave her one more kiss and settled down to sleep without waking her up.

― ☼ ―