I’m instantly aware that the snake is going to kill Pepper. Its head reaches the ceiling. It will strike at any moment. I only sensed its mana for a moment. But the moment it came out, it started cloaking itself. Why? What’s it trying to hide?
It’s strong as well. Even from the glimpse of mana I felt, I can tell that it’s on par with one my master’s generals. I haven’t met all of his generals, and most of them are dead now. Could it be a demon?
The only distinction between a demon and a monster is the manifestation of self. Demons are highly attuned to their being and therefore, their soul.
Why would a demon be here? Was it ordered to guard the seal? I’ve never been personally present when my master wrote a village seal. I’m unaware if that’s something he would do.
I can’t protect Pepper. I don’t even have time to consider why I would even want to protect her. In fact, Pepper likely believes that I’m responsible. She thinks I’ve led her into a trap. Will she retreat for backup?
“Answer,” the snake says. “You. You serve the Demon Lord. Don’t you? Do you not realize that the hero is right above us?”
I raise my chin. This thing knows me.
“The hero isn’t here,” I say.
“Hey,” Pepper says, shifting in the corner of my eye. She aims a finger at the floor.
The snakes tail shoots from the stairs. It strikes Pepper, pinning her to the wall.
Pepper shrieks, throwing her head back. The snake spins, rearing back and baring its dagger-like fangs.
“Moonlight Tranquillity!” I thrust a hand outward, and a pillar of golden flames erupts from my hand, consuming the snake’s head.
The tail withdraws, and Pepper falls forward. I glimpse what looks like a hole in her side before she levels both hands at the floor.
“Direct Line!” She dissolves and zips through the floor. She’s going after the seal. Now?
The snake hisses as the flames fade, setting its eyes on me.
“Do we not share a goal?” It asks. “Why fight? Have you forsaken your Lord?”
What’s my move? Fight? Does Pepper expect me to stall while she disrupts the seal? Does she realize that disrupting the seal won’t get rid of the monster currently here?
“I haven’t.” It comes out a bit smaller than I’d prefer. “I’m just… trying not to die.”
The snake lunges.
I move, stepping into a spin. The snake rockets by, piercing the wall behind me. But the tail whips, snagging my arm and yanking me after it.
I tuck my head as I’m pulled through the wall. Luckily, the fire must’ve weakened it. The wall gives easily and I’m sent sprawling onto the street.
The snake rolls along the ground before shooting up, head whipping every which way.
“This village… she’s here. She is weakened. I will kill the hero. I will earn a place at the Demon Lord’s side.”
Earn a place? Does this thing not even work for the Demon Lord? It’s a rogue creature?
“Hey!” I roll onto my stomach with a groan. Behind me, the wall crumbles.
The snake turns to me, its body coiling beneath its head.
“I see now. I thought you may have betrayed our Lord.” The snake tilts its head, eyes shimmering. “But you want it. You want to kill the hero yourself.”
I gather golden flames along my arms. They flicker like living sleeves. Moonlight Tranquillity isn’t an attack spell. It’s an activation. It’s an opening of my soul that allows me passive access to the flames.
“I will not give you the chance,” the snake says. “I will take her head and earn the Demon Lord’s undying respect!”
“You are a fool,” I say.
“A fool?” The head extends, darkening and smoothing. It twists and distorts, and a tuft of blue hair blooms from what I recognize as a human head. The head falls back, and two arms sprout just beneath it. The last thing that forms is a pair of breasts that are instantly covered by a veil of scaly skin that shifts like cloth.
A woman has sprouted from the snake, or at least the upper body of one. Its stark blue hair falls over its face, and its arms flex. The humanoid thing turns to me. The face is angular, and the nose is broad. Its smile is thin.
I quietly decide not to accept this thing as a woman.
“I am just like you,” it says. “A tool of the Demon Lord. But he hasn’t seen my worth yet. But he will.”
I stare down my nose at its slithering form and the scaly stomach that divides the human body from the serpentine. I flare my nostrils.
“You don’t look a bit like me,” I spit.
Its face scrunches. The tail snaps, the end cracking like a whip.
“Metaphorically!” it hisses, jaw dangling low.
I flick my arm towards it and my flames curl into a fireball in its face.
The snake drops, rolling along the ground. It lands on its hands and propels itself forward.
I hardly have time to look down before my feet are swept out from under me. I curl, drawing my legs in and planting a hand on the ground.
Then I twist, throwing my legs into a spin above me and guiding the flames around them. With a wide kick, I send the fire rocketing like a spear at the snake’s back.
The flames explode against her, knocking it to the ground. But it’s shallow, it’s up in an instant.
I land on my side with a grunt. Does Olexandrya feel this? This pain? Will it be enough to wake her?
Moonlight Tranquillity’s passive flames are only third-class level and they aren’t strong enough. I would likely have to cast as second-class spell to do some proper damage.
I did successfully cast Carnal Haze against Rakel. But there’s no guarantee it will end this fight. And anything above third-class spells risk deforming Olexandrya’s soul within me.
The snake whirls, and the tail flips, coming down at me.
I roll and the tail nails the ground next to me. At the same moment, I push up, throwing myself to my feet.
“Why are you here?” I call. “Have you been guarding the seal, why?”
The tail blurs. I hardly register the motion before it snaps around my ankle.
Wait.
All at once; I’m airborne. With a single jerk of the tail, I’m sent sprawling. I can’t track the ground. Everything is a blur and I’m flipping head over heels. I smash into something solid, and arms close around my chest.
Rakel lands hard beneath me, holding me against her chest.
“What is that?” Rakel asks as I stagger free. She’s coated head to toe in the centipede’s black blood.
My legs don’t support me. They just fold and I land on my knees. The world is still spinning and I can’t focus on anything. When my vision clears, I find a flag.
It clings to a tall pole and whips in the wind. A blue flag, bearing a horse surrounded by stars and words.
“Shields Together,” is written along the bottom.
“Hey,” Rakel grabs my arm and pulls me up. “What’s going on?”
“Pepper.” My voice is uneven. “She’s getting the seal.” I realize that Pepper may not even know what the seal would look like. I’ve only ever seen spell seals, never a summoning seal.
My worry is validated when a new green and yellow spider appears in the air. It isn’t as big as the earlier ones.
Rakel and I watch as the new spider lands on the rubble of the building Pepper and I had been in.
Pepper hasn’t disrupted the seal. I think of her wound. Had it been fatal?
It also means that snake didn’t come from the seal. Why is it here? This entire situation is spiraling.
“You need to get Olexandrya,” I say. “That snake thing is stronger than I am. I can’t fight it without risking the soul.”
“Olexandrya…” Rakel echoes. “Don’t call her that.”
“What?”
“She prefers Drya.”
I stare incredulously at her.
“Do you realize the kind of danger we’re in?” I snap. “That snake wants to kill Olexandrya. Can Olexandrya fight or not?”
Rakel shakes her head and releases my arm.
I all but crumple at her feet.
“Drya’s weak,” Rakel says. “She’s given up some of her soul after all. We’ll have to handle it.”
I stand slowly, still fighting through nausea. My head throbs.
“Pepper may have been killed,” I say quietly. “That snake struck her before she went into the basement to get the seal. Maybe that’s why she hasn’t disrupted it.”
“What did Pepper say?”
I think of Pepper’s gesture, aiming a single finger at the floor.
“She just pointed,” I say. “Then she went through the floor.”
“Pepper is tougher than me and Drya combined.”
I doubt that’s true. In fact, Pepper seemed like the weakest of the three.
“If she says she’ll do it,” Rakel says. “Our only option is to trust that. What will you do, Aerida?”
I straighten, pushing my hair out of my face.
“Will you fight with me?” Rakel holds out a bloody hand as she asks it.
“Fight? The snake?” I choke on the idea. “Weren’t you listening? It’s too powerful. Can’t you feel it’s…” I realize that I can’t feel the snake’s mana. It’s been cloaking itself since the moment it came out of the basement. I thought the cloaking was pointless. But now that I’ve lost sight of it, I have no way of knowing where it could be.
“The snake is stronger than us. We can’t win if Olexandrya can’t fight. It is simple. We need to get to Olexandrya before the snake does and leave.”
“You underestimate me,” Rakel says. “I can fight nearly as well as Drya can!”
“Well enough to match one of the Demon Lord’s generals?”
That gives Rakel pause.
“It may be cloaking itself now,” I say. “But I felt its mana. That’s the level we’re speaking of. This thing may be capable of a Heaven Ascent. It will kill us!”
Rakel shakes her head, scanning the village.
The flag snaps on the pole as the wind picks up.
“You can cast Heaven Ascent, can’t you?” I remember Pepper mentioning it as I say it. “Cast it now. It’s our best bet.”
“No. I can’t. It’s too dangerous.”
I furrow my brow. Is hers as suicidal as mine?
“My Heaven Ascent… If I cast it Drya, Pepper, and you will be killed.”
I stare at the woman, fighting a wave of incredulity.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying it’s messy,” she snaps. “My Heaven Ascent, it’s indiscriminate. I can’t contain it.”
I turn away from her, starting to pace. Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?
“Then that’s it,” I say, throwing up a hand. “We run or we die.”
“I suppose that’s it, right there.” Rakel scrapes dried blood off her face and shakes her head. “After you threw yourself onto that Soul Cleaver, I thought there was something in you. Something that could prove Drya right. But even if you forsake the Demon Lord, you’re still loyal to yourself.”
“You…” the word grows in my throat like a snarl. “All of you and your stupidity. What good does throwing yourselves into pointless fights accomplish? What does this dead village matter? There is nothing here! There is no one to protect! It isn’t selfish to want to live!” I can hardly breathe by the time I’m done.
Rakel stares at me, eyes wide.
I grab the front of her leather armor and yank myself into her face.
“You speak of regret,” I say. “When Pepper and Olexandrya, your sisters, have died. Will you not regret this foolishness? This refusal to run from a pointless fight?”
She doesn’t pull away. She just holds my gaze.
“You know nothing of the war, do you? You were cooped up in the palace more often than not, I imagine.”
It’s true. I don’t deny that. I spent most of my life behind the walls of my master’s palace, deep in his lands. The battle that led to my sacrifice was at the tail end of my first accompaniment out into the ‘Free Lands.’
“The Tikinoughts. When they marched, most people thought the war was lost. They were a slow moving wall of death cast across the land. We hadn’t even formed the coalition. It was just me, Pepper, and Drya. And Drya drew a line at this village. We were gonna stop them here.”
I let go of Rakel and look over my shoulder at the spider. It’s spraying a web down the side of the building it’s on.
There’s still no sign of the snake. But I don’t feel any damage. Presumably Olexandrya is okay.
“We stopped them. We broke the line. Us and the warriors of this village. There are people who lived here who are single handedly responsible for each of our lives. Here. It happened here. Drya was no one. After that, everyone called her a hero. They called us heroes.”
I meet her eyes.
“And it’s gone. How long? It’s only been five years! How long after we walked away did all of them get torn apart?”
“Look around,” I say, regaining my bearings. “Have you seen a single corpse? They may have fled.”
“No. There would be signs of packing. Someone would’ve heard. These people were killed. And…” she raises a trembling hand to her mouth. “I will not allow their home—their grave to be desecrated like this. Not while I’m breathing.”
“And what will that have accomplished? The lives you owe to the dead? What will throwing them away accomplish?”
The spider explodes in the corner of my eye. A blur zips from the mangled form, shooting into the air.
I whip my head, catching the snake as it spins in the air.
“Why’d it kill the spider?” Rakel asks.
I think the answer is obvious, but I tell her anyway.
“It’s trying to weaponise the seal,” I say. “It wants to summon a more powerful monster to help it kill us.”
Rakel’s brows furrow.
“Rakel,” I snap. “Decide now! Are we going to die in this village or not?”
The snake lands before us, cracking the roof beneath it.
Rakel backs up a step, throwing her arms up.
“I understand now,” it says, its head popping to the side. The blue hair falls in its face. “The people of this village didn’t seem especially strong.” With a flick of its tail, the flagpole is severed and falls off the rooftop. “I killed them quite easily, you see. This village, like you said, was pivotal in the formation of your coalition.”
Rakel flinches.
“Thats why,” the creature says, leaning in. “I decided to capture it for myself. I planned construct an encampment here and offer it to—”
“How dare you!” Rakel yells.
“Rakel,” I warn. “It’s probably—”
Rakel lunges headfirst into the snake’s tail. But the tail doesn’t penetrate. It skips off Rakel’s forehead as she’s made of stone.
Rakel snatches the tail and pulls hard, yanking the upper body along the floor.
“Hollow Core!” She raises an open palm, and a sphere of green energy explodes into life. But she stops before thrusting it into the thing’s chest.
And the snake just stares up at her. Its hair has fallen away, revealing the face.
“Why…” Rakel mumbles. “Why do you have that face?”
“I have all of them,” it says. The face twists and the hair shrivels into black. All at once, it’s a man staring up at Rakel with short black hair. “I’ve utilized everything available to me within this village. Including the seal…”
A shadow blooms above.
I raise my head and find a pair of massive black wings unfurling across the sky.
The enormous bat descends, blue eyes gleaming like stars. It swoops overhead, pulling a tidal wave of wind along with it.
Did the snake manually trigger the seal? How?
My hair whips in my face, and I stumble, struggling to keep my footing. I glimpse the fight through my hair.
The snake’s tail snaps, whipping across Rakel’s chest. The armor splits and blood fills the gap.
“Damn it!” I rush in, watching Rakel fall backward. She twists her arm, aiming the green sphere and propelling it with her fingers.
The sphere collides with the snake’s chest and explodes.