I pull open a drawer and rifle through the clothes within.
The house rumbles around me as I toss out blouses and knickers.
I’m wearing a heavy red skirt that sits at my ankles. I’d like to find something dark to make my hair stand out, even if it feels a bit silly.
I haven’t betrayed my master. Not really. I don’t really have an option. My choices are death or this. This weird ‘alliance’ with Olexandrya and her women.
They wouldn’t let me run away, not with my possession of Olexandrya’s soul. And I… I don’t want to die. Simple. Right? Of course, my master would think it simple. He would have me die.
A bellow reverberates, and there’s another rumble. A book falls off the drawer, slamming onto the floor with a cloud of dust.
It’s hard for me to imagine that Rakel would let me out of her sight so easily. I wonder if Pepper has another incorporeal body part inside of me.
On top of that, it’s difficult for me to imagine Olexandrya being “exiled” from their coalition. All these years I’d thought she was in charge of all these people. But apparently she was subservient to that Aluerme woman. Aluerme didn’t seem that strong, I wonder why Olexandrya listened to her.
I find a decent black long sleeve blouse. I pull it over my head and find that it dips a bit too low for my liking. The edge of the scab on my chest is clearly visible.
It’ll have to do.
I walk out of the room and follow a hallway to the obliterated main room of the house.
Through a hole in the wall, I see a massive red and yellow spider crash through a two-story house across the street. Bricks crack and crumble beneath the creature. In an instant, the building is reduced to a cloud of dust.
The spider rises, thick and hairy legs waving in the air.
Rakel comes down next, slamming a hand into the creature’s body.
“Hollow Core!”
A massive ball of green energy bursts to life, swallowing most of the spider’s body. It’s gone as fast as it appears, leaving nothing but a head and eight severed legs.
Rakel lands in the street before me. The legs falling around her. She looks me up and down.
“Gods,” she says, swatting a leg away before it lands on her. “What took you so long?”
“I couldn’t decide.”
This wasn’t supposed to be an extended task. Rakel had walked me out to find an abandoned house with some clothes I could steal.
She’d killed the first spider relatively easily. But then, more started appearing.
“I don’t know where they keep coming from,” Rakel says as we follow the street back to the house we’d been staying at. “Do you know this village?”
I follow a few steps behind her, watching the sky.
“No.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t,” Rakel spits. “You were never on the battlefield proper. You stuck to the Demon Lord’s side. Always at that palace.”
I shrug.
“Last winter, your master had an army of withered Tikinoughts.”
I scrunch my nose.
“An army of what?”
Rakel grumbles something under her breath.
“That is what Drya calls them. They’re twenty foot skeletal soldiers. They nearly laid waste to this village but the coalition fought them off.”
I look from ruined house to fallen wall. There isn’t a person in sight.
“Did you fight them off after they laid waste to the village?”
“No!” She snaps. “The village was fine when we left! And now… These spiders. I wonder if they a nest or something. But there were decently powerful people in this village. I can’t imagine they’d be bested by spiders like that.”
“That would be an underground creation cell,” I say. “That’s probably why the village is abandoned.”
Rakel stops.
“A what?”
I stop as well and point at the ground.
“Underground,” I say. “If I am correct, my master has had a seal drawn somewhere beneath us. The complexity and details will vary. But when conditions are met, a monster is summoned from somewhere in the world and brought here.”
“Conditions? Like what?”
I pluck at the neck of my shirt. I shouldn’t have gotten it. Especially without something to restrain my breasts. It’s too loose.
“For a small village like this,” I say. “It’s probably just the lack of a monster’s presence. For example: because you killed that spider, when the seal detects that no monster is here…”
“It’ll summon a new one?”
“Correct.”
Rakel stares off into the distance.
“I’ve never heard of magic like that. You say it’s drawn?”
“Sort of. My master creates them as if he’s drawing with his mana. Seals are his primary spellcasting style.”
“That explains a lot, actually,” Rakel says. “So many regions nowhere near the Demon Lord’s lands are plagued with constant monster attacks.”
“Yes. That would be seals. Master also sets them to operate as traps. They can be delegated to respond to certain amounts of people or even a certain word.”
I find Rakel staring at me with a horrified look on her face.
“I’m sorry if this is troubling for you,” I say. “But villages like this will never be habitable again unless the seals are taken care of.”
“How many villages…” Rakel shakes her head. “We didn’t know about them. We couldn’t have known.”
I furrow my brow.
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you have any idea how serious this is?” Rakel shouts.
Behind her, a massive green and yellow spider appears in midair. It lands on a building, falling onto its side.
“The coalition has saved so many villages, so many people from monsters like that!” Rakel yells, pointing at the spider as it regains it’s bearings. “What does it matter if more just appear when we leave? Is there just a trail of corpses in our wake?”
I look past her at the spider.
“I doubt it’s every village,” I say. “Probably only the ones strategically—”
Rakel’s hand snaps around my throat and I’m ripped off the ground. Her grip isn’t cutting off my air, not completely.
“I’m just answering your question,” I say, keeping my arms at my sides.
Rakel drops me.
“Get back to the others,” she says, flexing her hands.
“If you kill it, another one will just appear,” I say, rubbing my neck. “And these may be weak, but it won’t always be the same class. It could be something far more powerful if we’re unlucky.”
“Before I met Drya,” Rakel says. “I worked for a man named Corbrero. He used to run a lot of land down south.”
I wait for her to get to the point. The name Corbrero sticks out to me, though.
Meanwhile, the spider climbs up the side of the nearest building. It pays us little mind.
“Corbrero had me and a few other workers go around and investigate homes in the region. Homes of peasants and farmers. And the children there, I was instructed to round them up. Corbrero said it was for the greater good. They’d get jobs and better lives inside his city.”
Ah, there it is.
“You didn’t know he was feeding off of them?” I ask.
Rakel’s jaw tightens. Her hands tremble.
“It wasn’t until Drya and Pepper came. They brought the whole operation down. I fought Drya with everything I had because I genuinely believed Corbrero was protecting those kids.”
“You were wrong.”
“And because of that, I’m a killer. And I will spend the rest of my life failing to pay for those sins.”
Rakel turns, facing the spider.
“I didn’t know. But I know now. I will never turn away. I will never retreat. Not when I have the power to do something.” She gives me a small look over her shoulder. “That’s my role in this world.”
I nod.
“Alright, then.” And I turn and leave her to it.
When I get back to the shack, Pepper is sitting on Olexandrya’s stomach. Olexandrya’s chest is exposed and Pepper is applying some kind of cream to her scab.
My gaze lands on Olexandrya’s ample breasts for half a second before I meet Pepper’s eyes. I can vaguely feel the cold of the cream and the pressure of Pepper’s hands on my own chest. I’d also felt a strange pressure on my stomach, I thought it was just my hunger. But now I see it was Pepper.
“Sleeping,” Pepper says. “Once down Drya hard keep up.”
“Alright.” I cross the room and sit down on what I’ve decided to refer to as my bed. “Your friend, Rakel,” I say as I sit.
“Sister.”
I blink.
“You’re siblings?”
Pepper shakes her head.
“Blood no. But sister.”
I nod. It seems the less she tries to say the more sense she can make.
“Your sister, Rakel. She’s fighting a monster. It’s the fifth spider that’s been summoned in the village. If she keeps killing them, more will appear. I don’t know how long she can keep it up.”
“More?”
I decide to explain the underground cell to Pepper as well. Her reaction is entirely different from Rakel’s. By the time I’m done, her expression has hardly changed.
“Makes sense,” she says.
“If she keeps killing the spiders,” I say. “Something worse could be summoned. You should probably stop her.”
Pepper climbs off of Olexandrya and adjusts her tunic to cover her breasts and the wound.
“Why?”
I raise my chin at the woman.
Pepper folds her arms.
“Me. You. Cell.”
“I don’t know where the cell is,” I say. “It could be anywhere.”
Pepper points at the window. We watch as a spider is launched through the air. Its body spins for a moment before a streak of green light cuts it to ribbons.
I catch on then. We’ll watch and see where the next one comes from.
“Oh,” I say. “But why should I help you lot?”
Pepper frowns. Then she looks down at Olexandrya and plucks at her tunic, revealing some cleavage and her scab.
I look at Olexandrya’s chest before meeting Pepper’s eyes again.
“You like?” She asks.
“What are you implying?”
Pepper drops the tunic and shrugs, walking to the window. I watch her as she leans out, searching the air.
In the distance, Rakel lands on the wall of a building while gore rains around her. She crouches, spreading out her arms.
“I go.”
“Hunting down the core is a waste of time,” I say. “You’re better off talking Rakel down before she gets a serious threat summoned.”
Pepper shakes her head.
“Drya. Rakel. Both rocks. World not kind to rocks. To make world kind. My role.”
I process that for a moment, piecing her words together. Then I take another look at Olexandrya over my shoulder.
“I suppose I have nothing better to do,” I say. “If it will get us out of this village faster.”
The sky shifts, and a dark shape appears, curling in place like a rolling ball.
“There,” Pepper says.
“I see it,” I say, joining her at the window. “And it’s worse than a spider.”
The massive centipede unfurls as it falls. Its body is black and gold, reflecting daylight like streaks across the air. Its head is armed with three sets of gnashing mandibles that guard a blazing maw.
Rakel raises her arms.
Moments before impact, the centipede lets loose a spray of white flames that pour down over Rakel. She and the building beneath her are swallowed up.
“Oh,” I say. “Is she dead?”
Pepper hops out the window, vanishing below. I look down in time to see her land and roll along a dormer below before dropping off onto the ground. She looks up at me expectantly.
“I’m not doing that,” I say. I take the stairs. By the time I reach Pepper on the street, the centipede has reared up like an armored tidal wave.
Rakel is on its head, clinging to a mandible.
“She survived that?” I ask as Pepper starts running. “I suppose it’s no surprise she took a direct Carnal Haze, then.”
“Come!” Pepper snaps, rounding a corner. I dart after her.
Above, green light whips across the air like rippling waves. It’s instantly drowned out by another plume of white fire.
The centipede charges across the street in front of us, reducing buildings to flaming debris. A tower comes down like a felled tree, laced with white flames as it slams into the street.
The centipede turns its massive head, launching Rakel free. Rakel spins in the air, creating another of those massive green spheres and hurling it at the centipede. The sphere stretches like a brushstroke on the air before exploding against the centipede.
“Through!” Pepper calls, skidding to a stop in front of the wall of rubble.
“What?” I stop next to her.
Pepper grabs my hand.
“Through!” She thrusts her other hand at the rubble. “Direct Line!”
We come apart. Our bodies are disassembled and move through the air like dust. Every part of me mixes and twists with Pepper. Fire smoke and rubble rush by us.
Once we’re through, we snap back into place. Our bodies exactly as they were.
I collapse at Pepper’s feet, coughing violently. My body doesn’t feel right. Everything feels like it’s been taken apart and shuffled. I grab at my face, just to be sure it’s still there.
“Alright?” Pepper asks, grabbing my arm. “Come!”
“What?” I demand through dry heaves. “What did you do to me?”
Pepper pulls me to my feet.
“Come!”
I grab her by the hair, glaring as much hatred as I can manage.
“Never,” I hiss. “Do that again.”
Pepper hardly reacts.
Above, the centipede’s head moves, painting us in its shadow. I glimpse Rakel spinning in the air before the centipede jerks forward, capturing her in its mouth.
“Hey,” I say as Pepper starts running again. “Is she…” I watch the centipede shake it’s head before running after her.
Ahead is the rubble of the building Rakel had been perched on before the centipede appeared. It’s little more than a pile of rubble and flames.
The flames have changed to regular fire.
“Under,” Pepper says. She’s probably right. The centipede had appeared directly above this building. There’s likely a basement of some kind. I wonder if Rakel had chosen this building as her perch as a message.
All at once the shadow is gone. I look up, finding the centipede’s head replaced by a shower of black blood and viscera.
Pepper covers her head as we’re pelted with thick blood. I just close my eyes. It’s like regular rain; just thicker, hotter, and nastier.
Something crashes through a house nearby. I open my eyes and shield them from the pouring gore.
Rakel rises from the rubble, painted black. She stumbles forward, wiping her face. She is far stronger than I gave her credit for.
Overhead, the centipede’s body falls, shaking the ground.
“Hey!” I call. “Don’t kill the next one! We’re gonna take care of the seal. Just hang back!”
Rakel just raises her head, looking to the sky.
“Under!” Pepper snaps, not sparing Rakel a glance. “Come!”
I huff and follow her to the burning building. Somehow, the front door and a bit of wall are still standing. I kick the door open and am instantly hit by a wall of smoke.
My eyes water as I step through. If were lucky, we can find it and break whatever surface the seal is written on before the next thing comes.
“Look for a hatch,” I say, covering my mouth with my sleeve.
Pepper stops behind me squints into the smoke.
I focus my mana, twisting it around my feet. Then, I scatter it along the floor like a gust.
The nearest flames are blown out and the rubble is pressed against the walls. The stench of rotten blood fills the room, both of us are drenched with it.
A partially burned carpet reveals a hatch. Pepper goes straight to it and pulls it up.
I walk up behind her, staring down a set of rotten wooden stairs.
A flash blooms from the dark and a rush of mana flows like fire from within.
No. This isn’t right. Something is down there.
“Oh.” Pepper slams the hatch down.
“Forget the seal!” I snap. “We have to—”
The hatch explodes open, snapping off it’s hinges and shooting through the wall.
A thick, angular head rises from the opening. Two gleaming green eyes set upon us and a wide mouth opens, allowing a forked tongue to slip free.
The snake continues to rise, it’s spiky body twisting as it towers over us. It’s mouth moves slowly.
“Where is she?” The snake asks, it’s voice raspy and low. “Where is the hero?”