The Black Sheep found the lake within an hour of setting out. The green and red-cracked moons were waxing gibbous, so there was plenty of light to see by.
Namosa, the most experienced tracker of the group, ca up with a plan as soon as she saw the finely-graveled shore. "We should split up, cover more ground. Whoever finds tracks first can get the rest of us before we go off together."
"I’ll go with Kir," Noir said.
Kir had no strong feelings either way. But he did want to accomplish this quickly. "Stella, go with Sam and Namosa. You can fly to us if they find sothing."
"Works for ," Stella replied, taking off and landing on Namosa’s shoulder.
Namosa grimaced with her whole body, and Sam reached up to pick up Stella with both hands, planting the demon in raptor form on her own shoulder.
"Stella, ride ," Sam said.
"Now there’s sothing I want to hear more often," Stella said, eyeing Kir and blinking sideways with a raptor’s nictating mbranes.
Kir rolled his eyes, but he did feel a little humored by his familiar.
"I’ll send up a signal," Noir said. "Green if we find sothing, red if we get halfway without finding anything."
A quarter of the way around, Noir opened up a conversation.
"I appreciate you knowing how to speak to a Valrian, back there," he said. "They’re very prickly about being honest."
"I didn’t know," Kir said. "And I’m prickly about honesty too, in my own way." Kir felt a twinge of dissonance, a familiar feeling given how he’d worked hard to conceal his past life as the source of his knowledge.
It was a contradiction he hadn’t yet resolved, and one that ate at him sotis. The more he rembered, the more dishonest he felt. Was it the guilt of who he had been before?
"It’s in their creed or sothing," Noir said. "Conflict and truth are sacred. Everything’s a war to them."
"You sound like you know a lot about them," Kir said.
"A lot of beastkin beco Valrians. On the Wolf Plains and in Frosthol they’re practically everywhere, so in Nyandor it was impossible not to hear stories." He sighed.
Kir nodded. "I never heard anything about them until I left Darlbridge... truth be told, I got these from a valrian," he gestured at one of the earrings still in his ear. "Demon Breaker Halie..."
"That sounds like quite the tale," Noir replied.
Kir’s lips tightened for a mont. "She showed up to my Adventurer’s Guild certification and goaded into a fight. Which I lost. After destroying half the guild hall."
"Magic like yours attracts so powerful challengers. I find it strange how the strongest mages always go looking for fights."
"Tell about it. I used to have dueling bands on my tail. There’s this construct that puts them on you. Black for victories, red for losses... Let’s just say I never... lost..."
Kir stopped in place. About a third of the way in their walk, he saw sothing glinting on a tree.
"You see that?" he pointed.
"Yeah," Noir said.
Walking up to it, Kir reached up and plucked it, seeing that it was a bracer, and its narrowness suggested the owner had thin wrists. "Is this rust?" he lowered the bracer and turned it in the moonlight.
As soon as Noir saw it, the beastkin said, "That’s not rust. That’s blood. Few days old I think."
"Think it’s hers?"
"I don’t... wait." Noir looked deeper into the woods before stepping ahead and peering past a bush. "I think it’s a ssage," he said.
Three steps later, Kir saw the ssage loud and clear. The match to the bracer was laid at the bottom of an arrow-shaped set of rocks, pointing deeper into the woods.
"Why would she co here and make an arrow?" Kir asked.
"It might not have been her... Could be soone else found her or..."
"Or it’s a trap," Kir interjected.
"...The demon challenging the Valrians to go to them," Noir concluded. He puffed so air between his lips.
As agreed, Noir sent a ball of green light into the air to signal he’d found sothing.
"I... have an idea," Kir said. "Sothing I’ve been thinking about."
"It’s you wanting to go off on your own, isn’t it." Noir frowned.
Kir continued as if he hadn’t heard Noir calling him out. "If I go ahead, alone, I can try to talk to the demon. Reason with them before the rest of you catch up, and if there’s a fight, I’m pretty sure I can just switch to my war form to deal with them."
Kir had practiced entering his war form exactly once since returning to normal. Getting into it ant flooding his body with mana in a specific fashion, but getting out of it was sothing he had yet to master. He’d had to exhaust himself again to do so.
"Wow. ’Pretty sure.’ I’m sold," Noir snarked. "What happened to going together?"
"We are going together," Kir said as he stepped deeper into the woods, "I’m just going ahead first."
"Leave a trail!" Noir shouted as Kir increased and enhanced his stride, heading in the direction the arrow indicated.
Drawing Kangetsu, he made sure to carry it at an angle that would shallowly slash the trees as he wound his way amongst them.
One kiloter into his stride, he ca upon a small stream.
Pausing to look around, he saw a gauntlet had been roughly stuck onto a broken branch, in a way that made it point upstream.
Cutting a small notch in the bark with Kangetsu, Kir followed the stream until he began to see sothing odd. Pale stones with regular shapes were scattered here and there. Like the corners of bricks sunk into the mud, illuminated in the light of the moon.
He saw the broken bridge well before he noticed the bit of smoke rising from underneath it, and the cloth draped over the bend of its arc like a curtain hung on a broken branch.
Slowing his steps, he approached cautiously, peering every which way and upward too.
"Hello?" he called out. "Is soone there? I just want to talk."
There was no answer, but as he neared the bridge he heard a pained groan.
Keeping Kangetsu readied in one hand, he hastened toward the sound, throwing open the ragged curtain to reveal an elven woman beneath what looked like an inverted bearskin rug. He took a step under the bridge-
"Don’t move, kin" a voice said from behind Kir, right as he felt the press of cold steel against the back of his neck.
Kir froze. He had failed to notice that soone was hiding within the arc of the bridge, right behind the curtain.
"I co in peace," Kir said as she moved around and behind him, keeping her sword on his neck even as she took Kangetsu from his other hand. He did not resist.
"What dukedom are you with? Who do you call lord?" she asked.
"No one," Kir said. "I’m only half-demon."
"Born or made?" she asked.
"Born," Kir replied. Half-demons could be made?
"Are you alone?" she asked next.
"I am not. My people and I are just here to rescue a lost Valrian" Kir said. "We’d rather not fight you."
"How many?"
"Five. We’re five."
"You’re here to rescue Vatima," the demon said. "She is not well, and I do not know if she is too fragile to be moved. Everyone I’ve seen in these woods is fragile. They could not withstand even a single monster."
"The people at the camp think it was you that killed their people. They said you stole supplies..."
"I did, when Vatima’s wounds turned sour. I tried to approach them before, the warriors down there, but they fired upon . Since then I have had little ti even to hunt for food, since the monster’s at went rotten. Her condition worsens."
"All the more reason to let my group take her," Kir argued. "We have soone familiar with treating aytherfolk. I promise we won’t try to fight you unless you fight us. You can even go, while we retrieve her."
The demon paused for a long mont. "Swear it," she said. "Aytherian warriors are honorable, are they not? And you say you are from here."
Kir almost dropped his arms in surprise. "What would you have swear on?" he asked.
"How about this blade... it is of fine make. And I cannot identify what tal this is," she said.
"Her na is Kangetsu. Cold Moon," Kir said. "And I swear on her that my people an you no harm."
The demon laughed, a sound oddly between harsh and lodious. "A sword as a woman? Are you not able to find one on your own? Or can you not see them from that height."
Kir’s face burned a bit with anger as he risked turning, the rotation putting her blade at the side of his neck.
The demon before him was white-haired and red-skinned. Broad-chested yet alluringly androgynous. Kir felt an odd pull, similar to what he had with Stella but not as sharp. Her features were rather draconic to his eyes, with scutes protecting her forearms, tail, and legs, and replacing eyebrows over her orange eyes.
Four horns grew from her skull, two protecting her cheeks, curved in a way that did not block her vision, and two protecting the back of her head, arced backward similarly to Kir’s. Her hair was cut roughly, about neck length behind her horns in a manner that suggested she’d done so blindly with a knife. The broadsword she held against him was steel, with a herringbone pattern to its grains and so red dye on the surface.
Her clothes were the strangest thing about her. Kir was unaware of what fashion was like on Hell, but he expected more than a loincloth and rough-cut fur top; albeit based solely on the fact that Maledict had been rather well dressed when Kir last saw him.
"Do you accept my oath?" Kir asked.
"I accept. Break it, and I will take Kangetsu with when I depart. After I kill you with her," she promised, admiring his blade.
"Let wait outside your shelter. They won’t attack if they see I’m safe."
"Very well," she finally withdrew her blade from his neck. "I am Amarena, daughter of the Sin of Wrath, Leviathan the Invincible."
Kir rose, fixing his posture now that he had the chance. "My na is Kir."
In an instant, both Kangetsu and her blade flashed before pausing, ready to scissor through the front of his throat as they pressed against his skin.
"Maledict’s spawn!" she hissed.
Kir could only think to himself: Fucking dammit, Dad!
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