Five years passed like water through hands.
That was the thing about immortality I hadn't expected. Not the length of time itself, but how it changed the texture of experience. Days blurred. Seasons cycled. I stopped carving marks to count them.
Solitär and I settled into a pattern that barely qualified as routine.
We moved constantly, never staying in one place longer than a few months. Sometimes we observed human settlements from a distance. Sometimes we disappeared into wilderness for weeks at a time.
She didn't teach in any conventional sense. She'd point at something and wait for me to figure it out. A ward carved into stone. A spell residue lingering in the air. The way mana flowed differently through living wood versus dead.
"What do you notice?" she'd ask.
And I'd have to answer. Have to think. Have to measure.
Slowly, I started to sense mana without trying. It became like peripheral vision, always there once you learned to pay attention. Every living thing had a signature. Humans burned bright and messy. Animals flickered like candles. Plants hummed with slow, deep currents.
Demons were different. Their mana was cold and precise.
Elves, I'd learned, were somewhere between humans and demons. Long-lived enough to refine their technique, but still fundamentally emotional. Still tied to sentiment in ways demons found inefficient.
"You're improving," Solitär observed one afternoon. We were sitting on a cliff overlooking a human village. "Your mana control is nearly adequate now."
"Nearly adequate, huh. Is that a praise?"
"For five years? It is." She was eating an apple, which still seemed strange. Demons ate, slept, did all the things living creatures did. "Most elves take fifty years to reach your current level."
"Because they're slow learners?"
"Because they don't have urgency. When you have a thousand years, why rush?" She bit into the apple thoughtfully. "You still think like a human. You measure progress in years, not centuries. It makes you reckless, but also faster."
I'd learned to do magic. Basic things at first. Creating light, moving small objects, sensing other mages from a distance. Then more complex work. Barriers. Offensive spells. The intricate dance of mana flow that separated a competent mage from a dangerous one.
Solitär never demonstrated unless I asked directly. And when she did demonstrate, it was with the minimum necessary movement.
"Magic is a language," she'd said during our second year together. "Humans speak it with passion. Demons speak it with grammar. Elves speak it with vocabulary memorized over centuries. You need to decide which approach serves you."
"What if I use all three?"
"Then you'll be mediocre at everything."
But I tried anyway. Human intensity, demon precision, elven patience. It shouldn't have worked. Most of the time it didn't. My spells failed more often than they succeeded, collapsing into mana static or dissipating before forming.
Solitär watched every failure with the same calm interest.
"Why don't you correct me?" I asked after a particularly frustrating afternoon of failed barrier spells.
"What would I correct?"
"The technique. The execution. Something."
"Your technique is adequate, and your execution is sufficient. Hmmmm the problem is your intent." She gestured at the dissipated mana around me. "You're trying to synthesize three incompatible philosophies. It creates internal contradiction. The mana reflects that."
"So I should pick one?"
"You should resolve the contradiction, or accept that your magic will always be unstable." She stood, brushing dirt from her clothes. "Though instability has its uses. Unpredictability can be valuable in combat."
We encountered other mages occasionally. Humans mostly, traveling the roads between settlements. Sometimes we'd observe them from hiding. Solitär would quiz me on their techniques, their efficiency, their probable skill level based on mana signature alone.
"That one," she'd say, pointing to a mage in traveling robes. "Estimate their combat capability."
I'd learned to read the signs. Mana density, flow patterns, the way they carried themselves. "Mid-level. Maybe forty years of training. Specialized in elemental magic, probably fire-based judging by the heat signature. Overconfident."
"Why overconfident?"
"They're not concealing their mana at all. Broadcasting it like a signal fire."
"Correct. They'd die in the first exchange against any demon worth the name."
Once, we encountered a demon. He was young by demon standards, maybe three hundred years old. He noticed us from half a mile away and approached cautiously.
"Solitär," he said, inclining his head slightly. "I heard rumors you were in this region."
"Rumors are usually true." Solitär didn't move. "What do you want?"
"Information. The Demon King's forces are mobilizing near the northern territories. Thought you'd want to know."
"I don't involve myself in the war."
The demon's eyes flicked to me. "And the elf?"
"My disciple."
His expression shifted to something like surprise. "You're training an elf?"
"I'm observing an elf with unusual characteristics. The training is incidental."
"The Seven Sages of Destruction won't like it."
"The Seven Sages can express their displeasure directly if they wish." Solitär's tone didn't change, but the air grew colder. "Was there anything else?"
The demon left quickly after that.
"Who are the Seven Sages of Destruction?" I asked when he was gone.
"The Demon King's strongest generals. Seven demons of exceptional power who lead his armies." She started walking again. "They believe demons should focus on perfecting killing magic. Training an elf contradicts that philosophy."
"Are you worried?"
"No. They're powerful, but predictable. Power without curiosity is just violence."
That was the longest she'd ever spoken about demon politics. Usually, she avoided the topic entirely, deflecting my questions with other questions.
But over five years, I'd pieced together a rough picture of this world.
There was a Demon King. He controlled most of the demon population and had been at war with humanity for centuries. The war was less active conflict and more ongoing skirmishes across a massive frontier. Demons held the north. Humans held the south. The borderlands between were contested territory.
Elves mostly stayed out of it. They lived long enough to see wars as temporary inconveniences. They'd help humans occasionally, but never committed fully to either side.
"Why do demons fight humans?" I'd asked during our third year together.
"Because humans expand. They breed fast, die fast, and fill every available space. Demons require territory for study and development. The interests conflict."
"That's it? Territory?"
"What else would there be? Ideology? Demons don't have ideology beyond individual curiosity. We're not unified by belief, just by self-interest that occasionally aligns."
"Then why follow the Demon King?"
"He's the strongest. Following him is more efficient than fighting him. Most demons understand that calculus." She'd paused. "Though some don't. Those are usually the interesting ones."
I thought about that a lot. About power and efficiency and what happened to beings who lived long enough to reduce everything to mathematics.
My magic improved slowly. By year five, I could maintain a barrier for hours, cast basic offensive spells without thinking, and sense mana signatures from nearly a mile away. Solitär said I was adequate.
Coming from her, it felt like high praise.
One evening, we were camped in an abandoned watchtower. Human construction, maybe a century old. The stones were crumbling, but the structure held.
I was practicing mana concealment, trying to reduce my signature to nothing. It was harder than it sounded. Mana wanted to flow. Restricting it felt like holding your breath underwater.
"You're approaching it wrong," Solitär said from where she sat reading a book she'd taken from a dead mage's satchel six months ago.
"How should I approach it?"
"You're trying to suppress your mana. That requires constant effort." She didn't look up from the book. "Instead, circulate it internally. Create a closed system. The mana still flows, but it doesn't leak into the environment."
I tried it. The difference was subtle but significant. Instead of fighting against the natural flow, I redirected it inward. It took more finesse but less sustained effort.
My mana signature dropped to almost nothing.
"Better," Solitär said. "Though you're still leaking slightly from your extremities. Tighten the circulation at your hands and feet."
I adjusted. The leak stopped.
"Adequate."
I released the concealment and sagged against the wall. "Demons don't normally do this. You said so yourself."
"Most demons don't see the point. Why hide what you are?" She finally looked up from her book. "But I'm not most demons. And you're not a normal elf. Normal approaches don't serve unusual circumstances."
"What makes you different from other demons?"
"Curiosity about humans. Most demons study magic. I study humans." She set the book aside. "Humans are fascinating. They live such short lives but accomplish remarkable things. They shouldn't be capable of what they achieve, yet they are. That contradiction interests me."
"Is that why you took me as a disciple? Because I'm a contradiction?"
"Partially. You have memories of a short-lived species but the lifespan of a long-lived one. That combination doesn't exist naturally. I want to see what develops."
"I'm an experiment, huh."
"Everything is an experiment. You're just more interesting than most."
I should have been angry. Maybe I would have been, in my old life. But five years with Solitär had taught me to think more like a demon. Emotion was inefficient. Facts were facts.
She was using me to satisfy her curiosity. I was using her to survive and learn. The exchange was balanced.
"What happens when the experiment ends?" I asked.
"When I've learned what I wanted to learn?" She considered the question seriously. "Then we part ways. You'll do whatever you choose to do with your centuries. I'll continue my studies."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. Demons don't maintain relationships out of sentiment. When the utility ends, so does the association." She tilted her head. "Does that bother you?"
"I don't know yet."
"Good. Uncertainty is honest."
We sat in silence for a while. Outside, the night sounds of the forest continued. Insects, distant animals, the wind through leaves. Normal sounds. Sounds that would continue long after I was gone.
Five years. I'd been in this world for five years.
It felt like yesterday and a lifetime ago simultaneously.
"Tomorrow we travel east," Solitär said eventually. "There's a human city there. Large enough to have a mage academy. I want to observe their teaching methods."
"From a distance?"
"Of course. Humans don't react well to demons walking through their gates." She glanced at me. "Though you could enter if you concealed what you are."
"What I am?"
"My disciple. Elves with demon-taught magic have a distinct signature. Mages can sense it if they're skilled enough."
"Would they attack?"
"Probably. Humans are predictable that way." She stood and stretched. "Sleep. We have a long walk tomorrow."
I closed my eyes but didn't sleep immediately. Instead, I practiced the internal mana circulation, feeling the flow loop through my body without leaking. It was meditative. Calming.
Five years of learning to be something I'd never been.
I wondered how many more years it would take before I figured out what that something was.
Outside, the two moons rose over the forest. The same moons I'd seen the night I woke up in this world.
They'd rise and set thousands more times before I died.
The thought should have been terrifying.
Instead, it just felt like a fact.
Time moved differently here.
And I was finally learning to move with it.