103 – Demons

When Zael finally stepped off the Convoy and into the fresh late-morning air, he took a deep breath and held it for several long moments.

“Thank the gods,” he said after exhaling. “We’re finally here.”

“Don’t be a crybaby,” his sister responded. “It was only a week. We’ve both been on longer trips than that.”

“Not cramped up the entire time, we haven’t.”

“I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“You’ve always been able to sit still and read all day. I can’t. Drives me insane.”

Sari rolled her eyes. “Should we flag down a carriage?”

He recoiled at the suggestion. “No. We’re walking. I need to stretch my legs.”

“I don’t think you realize how big human cities are.”

“I’m perfectly aware. Saw the walls coming in just fine.” They hadn’t held a candle to the towering, polished-black defenses of Ochreclast, but the closer the Convoy had gotten, the more he’d grown dumbfounded at how the squat stone perimeter just… went on and on, like the human lands themselves. He wondered even now if his eyes had been deceiving him. How many people lived in this city? More than all the demons in Keresi territory combined? “But I don’t think you realize how badly I don’t want to be stuck in another box.”

“For twenty minutes?”

“Yes.”

“Such a baby,” Sari tutted. “Let’s go find a directory then.”

“Directory? Just ask someone.” His eyes quested around before his gaze sharpened on a target. “Hey, you there! Human. I have a question for you.”

A brief, productive conversation ensued with one of the humans just outside the busy train station platform, and in short order, he had secured directions to the Adventurer’s District. For some reason, Sari was giving him an entertained look as they left.

“You’re terrorizing the local populace again, brother.”

“What? How so?”

“For one, take your hand off your hilt.”

He looked down to see his hand was indeed resting on the leather handle of his sidearm. He blinked in surprise.

“And stop scowling,” Sari said. “And looming. I know you’re in a bad mood because of all the traveling, but you’re scaring the civilians.”

“I’m not scowling. Or looming.”

Normally he wouldn’t care how he was perceived by random humans, but seeing how he and Sari were here in Meridian as representatives of House Keresi, he knew appearances mattered. He loathed politics, but he couldn’t ignore them, particularly in foreign lands. In that regard, Father might have sent Sari along to be his minder rather than the reverse.

“You really should put away your axe too,” Sari added. “Especially if we’re not taking a carriage. Our tattoos and uniforms are already making people uneasy. Nobody this far south is used to seeing”—she paused for a second as she picked the right word—“traditional demons.”

Yes, he’d noticed that; he wasn’t blind. They’d made it out onto the streets from the train platform by now, and while the capital of the human kingdoms was more diverse than some of the cities they’d stopped briefly in, none of the other demons he’d seen were in high noble’s garb—garb which was closer to human military uniforms than the ridiculous frippery human nobles preferred—nor did most even have facial tattoos. Certainly not the complex designs that adorned his and Sari’s faces.

So they stood out. People were swerving in wide arcs to avoid them.

“I’m not putting away my axe,” he said after debating the idea. He didn’t care if plainly bearing one’s weapons wasn’t common in human territory—so long as he wasn’t breaking local laws, he refused. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that he would rather walk around missing his trousers. A warrior was more than his weapon… but only in the sense that a person was more than their arms and legs.

Sari sighed. “Then at least stop scowling at everything that moves.”

“I’m not scowling,” he said, scowling at her. “Stop making things up.”

She shook her head. “Let’s go find you an early lunch. You’re going to fight whatever poor fool looks at you wrong next, I can feel it.”

Zael felt rather like his little sister was belittling him… but his stomach rumbled at the suggestion, and maybe he had been wearing a mean expression, because the woman he’d asked directions from had scurried away a little too fast for him not to make note of it.

Sari snickered, but at least didn’t tease further. “I want to ask about all those ridiculous rumors, too,” she added after a few more seconds of walking.

He nodded in agreement. He and Sari had been making utmost haste toward Meridian, so while they might not have been going out of their way to track down the current gossip, it was impossible to not overhear conversations. And the buzz in the human kingdoms was absurd indeed, even by the standards of how nonsensical rumors could become anywhere in the world.

When he’d inserted himself into one of those conversations, he’d received such bizarre explanations—about ‘voidbeasts’ and the return of the Sorceress or maybe intervention by the gods themselves—that even Sari had dismissed everything they had heard. That said, there was usually a kernel of truth hidden within even the most fanciful gossip, so he’d been curious to arrive in Meridian and find out what had actually happened. Surely the local citizenry would have a better report. Not a truly accurate one, of course, but more so.

Unfortunately, when he and Sari tracked down a tavern to eat at, the barmaid who served them relayed almost exactly the same story. And when he expressed doubt over the whole thing, the woman seemed nearly offended—there was apparently nothing to doubt, because the entire city had been able to [Inspect] the twentieth-elevation monsters slithering through the sky… and had all also seen the even more powerful spells that had peeled those beasts apart like insects.

The barmaid, for her part, held the adamant position that it had been the gods who had intervened—no disrespect to the Sorceress and her legacy, of course. Several other nearby tables chimed in, and around them, an argument picked up. Even a week later, it remained a topic that ignited like dry kindling. As made sense considering the sheer insanity of the event.

When Zael left the tavern with his sister at his side, he immediately asked her, “So what do you make of all of that?”

“I have no idea, honestly. The timing is kind of suspicious, though?”

“What timing?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“From the sounds of it, it happened the night before Father sent us away.”

He digested that. His brow furrowed as he tried to understand what Sari was implying. “Did he… know something?”

Sari was quiet for a while. “It could easily be a coincidence. But he did hurry us off without any good reason why. Even if Cousin Nysari has been missing for a long time, what would warrant the Primus sending two of his children across the world on such short notice? It’s obvious that something more is going on.”