When I open my eyes, it’s difficult to be surprised when I find Pepper sitting next to me fiddling with one of my horns.
She looks relatively unharmed and has a small smile on her face.
I’m lying in the destroyed courtyard and she’s seated on a conveniently sized slab of brick.
“These horns are tough,” Pepper says.
I can’t move. Something heavy is on my arm. I can hardly feel the arm itself. I want to turn my head to make sure I haven’t blown the limb off, but my neck won’t move.
“You are a piece of work,” Pepper goes on. “You could’ve killed Drya, you know?”
Behind her I find Olexandrya, and Rakel laid out in similar states. A blue blob of energy sits on Rakel’s chest, pulsing like water. Olexandrya has one on her arm, the same arm I hit Rakel with.
I figure that’s the weight on my arm. I must have a similar blob of my own.
“It’s a healing spell,” Pepper says. “Basic second-class. It won't get you moving, but it'll dull the pain and make you heal a bit faster.”
She taps the scab on my chest.
“I can't be breaking my brain to heal you too many times. Sometimes you just gotta live with the consequences.”
I open my mouth slowly, inhaling a dry breath.
“Will you…” I rasp. “Quit messing with my horns?”
Pepper scoffs and retracts her hand. The woman has the nerve to look offended.
“I thought you liked it,” she mumbles. “You never told me otherwise.”
I decide not to address her nonsense.
“The snake,” I say.
“Gone. Rakel turned it to mush up there. I guess that’s only thanks to you.” Pepper’s cheeks soften as she gives me an odd smile. “Thank you for taking care of my rocks.”
I groan, closing my eyes.
I think of the last time I’d seen Pepper. After the snake had speared her. I scan her form for any sign of a wound.
“It was hard to mess with that seal,” Pepper says. “I could only see it when stuff was being summoned. So it really expedited things when that snake started abusing it.”
I remember the way her mana spiked whenever a creature was summoned. But my recollection is cut when something clicks.
“You’re talking normal?” I say. “What?”
Pepper’s eyes widen.
“Right.” She raises a finger to her lips. “It usually fixes when I disassemble enough times.”
Pepper gives a small shrug.
“Anyway,” she puffs up her cheeks and looks over at Olexandrya and Rakel. “You guys are lucky I got out here in time, or you all would’ve been just as mush as that snake.”
“What do you mean?”
Pepper tilts her head at me.
“You fell from nearly a hundred feet,” she says. “Did you think you just happened to land well?”
I swallow that. It had felt like I’d hit the ground at full speed. Then again, I’d also blacked out at the same moment.
“I caught you,” Pepper says. “Rakel went through a building, though. But she's tough. She can take it.”
“Caught?”
She nods like the word explains itself.
“I was falling quite fast,” I say. “In fact, I was launched… by an explosion.”
Pepper nods again.
“I saw that. Did a number on you and Drya’s arms.”
“How did you catch me?”
Pepper holds out a hand, and her sleeve falls back. The tanned skin of her arm smooths and melts into a blue ooze.
"I just had to expand my shape,” she says. “My entire body is like this. Just had to get under you and absorb the impact.”
“You’re… a slime?”
“Don’t tell the others. They have no idea.”
“How many secrets are you keeping?”
Pepper’s arm returns to normal.
“Enough,” she says. “Besides, I am healing you for the third time now. You ought to be grateful.”
I think about those last moments. Watching Rakel rise and accepting whatever fate was to befall me.
“I am,” I say. “Thank you for saving me. I suppose you only did it to save Olexandrya.”
“Olexandrya?” Pepper echoes, turning up her nose at me. “Drya. Just call her Drya.”
“That nickname is childish,” I say.
“You don’t like calling people by nicknames? What If I told you my name is actually Pappeninonunyn,” she says.
I have to process the nonsense she’s chucked into my ears. I scrunch my nose as I do, my head feeling like its melting like her arm had.
“It’s northern,” she adds with a few quick nods, as if that makes it sound like a perfectly reasonable name and not a string of repetitive noises.
“Then I’ll call you… that,” I say. “Whatever you just said.”
Pepper scoffs again.
“The seal,” I say, trying to stay on topic. “Is it still there?”
“Yes. But I’ve reworked it. It summons the other way now. So wherever the seal it was pulling all those monsters from is where they all went.”
“Impressive.”
“I do my best.” But her face darkens. “That’s not all I found down there, though.” She looks past me at the sky. “That snake, it killed them. It killed every single person in this village.”
Compared to Rakel's fury, Pepper's reaction feels strangely calm.
“It consumed their souls,” I clarify. “To make itself more powerful. It wanted to earn rank in the Demon Lord's army.”
Pepper knits her brows and raises a hand to her mouth.
“Is that why…”
“What?”
“All of the bodies. They’re still down there.”
The image of the snake's Heaven Ascent splitting the sky curdles in my head. Faces spilling over each other, desperate to be seen.
“We were surprised when this place was abandoned,” Pepper says. “After we were kicked out of the coalition, we came straight here…”
And they found this abandoned corpse.
I wonder how it happened. Did it start with one person? Did the snake take them one by one into that basement? Maybe it had a sort of nest down there.
Pepper shakes her head.
“I'm angry.” Yet her face is completely plain. “I want to kill the Demon Lord.”
I watch her face for a moment.
“You would lose,” I say. “The only one who can match my master is the hero… Olexandrya.”
“Master…”
Behind her, Olexandrya sits up. She raises her arm with the blob on it and eyes it.
“Geez,” Olexandrya grumbles, looking over. “What a mess.”
Pepper huffs and turns.
“I don't want to hear a word from you. You were asleep for the whole fight!”
“Huh?” Olexandrya sputters, getting to her feet. “I helped!”
“You tried, and you missed! You just hit the stupid bat!”
“I was tired!” She saunters over to us.
“It would’ve been far more convenient if you’d managed to kill the snake,” I say. “It would’ve spared Rakel and me the trouble.”
Olexandrya drops next to Pepper. Then, she goes further, leaning into a bow. She presses her forehead against the cracked bricks.
“What is this?” I ask, looking to Pepper for an explanation.
Pepper just shrugs.
“You seriously saved our skins,” Olexandrya says into the bricks. “I should’ve been in there. If not for you… I don’t even want to think about what would’ve happened.”
I stare at her, waiting for her to get up. What is she waiting for? Should I say ‘you’re welcome?’ I’m not doing that. Instead, I move the conversation along and pay her no mind.
“That snake,” I say. “Do any of you know why it was here?”
Olexandrya raises her head.
Pepper purses her lips.
“It’s bothering me,” I add. “Rakel says the lot of you fought a battle here five years ago. I can’t imagine why my master would leave a seal here after that. If he’d done it before, you would’ve seen the seal at work.”
“Your master does a lot of strange things,” Pepper says. “I think he’s evil or something.”
I ignore her.
“And the snake. It was absurdly powerful. It had a level of soul attunement beyond basic demon understanding. It was able to meld the souls of the villagers into itself. That’s usually something you’d expect from a general level demon.”
Olexandrya and Pepper share a look.
“It must’ve happened sometime in the last few years,” Pepper says. “And that… demon, it showed up between then and now.”
“Obviously,” I snap. “I’m not wondering when. I’m trying to understand why.”
“Your master,” Olexandrya says. “The Demon Lord. He hates me. I wouldn’t be surprised if he detected us on our way here and orchestrated the seal and the snake the night before we arrived.” She pries the blue energy off her arm, and it dissolves. “That’s the kind of person he is.”
I don’t say anything. It’s hard to picture my master doing something so petty. What would he gain from writing a seal in the basement of a village like this? Where the battle was already lost? Revenge? A type of psychological attack on Olexandrya?
“Drya,” Pepper says, her face tense. “Come on. I have to show you something.” Her eyes meet mine for a moment before she gets up.
I return my attention to the sky as they walk away.
Eventually, Rakel gets up as well. I’m still watching the sky when she walks up to me. She doesn’t sit. She just stands next to me. The blob on her chest has shrunk.
“Sorry I hit you,” I say. “It must’ve hurt.”
“No. I hardly felt it. Looks like you hurt yourself more than you hurt me.”
“I feel fantastic,” I say. I’ve mentally accounted for the worst of my injuries. A gash across my chest, skinned hands, cuts on my forearms, and bruises everywhere. “Your sisters left. I think they went to the basement. The bodies are down there.”
Rakel stiffens and clenches her hands into fists.
“I wanted you to know something,” Rakel says. “I saw them.”
“Who?”
“The people. When I struck the snake and destroyed her body. It was like a cloud of… faces. They screamed and screamed until they disappeared like smoke in the wind.”
“They’re better off,” I say. “Better in the wind than inside of that thing.”
I wait for her to walk away. But she keeps standing there.
I close my eyes slowly and open them.
“What is it, Rakel?” I say. “Can’t you see that I’m busy?”
Rakel raises a hand to the blob on her chest.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“No. Don’t do that.”
She narrows her eyes.
“Let me speak,” she insists.
I turn my attention back to the sky, unwilling to argue.
“Is it true?” She asks. “What you said?”
I realize she’s referring to what I told her before I leapt from that window. I’m already regretting being so honest with her.
“I told you before,” I say. “I’m not trying to die. Is that so incomprehensible to you?”
She shakes her head slightly.
“It’s just surprising. I never expected you to be so human.”
“I’m not human,” I reply. “Remember?”
“What?”
I squint up at her.
“I’m a demon,” I say.
Rakel looks shocked. She raises a hand to her face and drops it.
“This surprises you? I have horns. Did you not believe they were real? I am subservient to the Demon Lord. What doesn’t add up here for you?”
Rakel stammers.
“I don’t want your apology,” I say. “I don’t care if you think I’m human. I just don’t want to die. That is all.”
There’s a loaded quiet between us for a few moments. Rakel continues to just stand there.
“If it weren’t for you,” she says. “I think we would’ve been killed here.”
I close my eyes again.
“I won’t forget,” she adds. “That is all.”
When I open my eyes, she’s walking away.
The sky moves, oranges bleeding across the clouds. In that time, I watch as Rakel and Olexandrya make multiple trips through the courtyard. Each time they come through, they each carry a body.
I end up falling asleep at some point because I wake to Olexandrya lifting me. One arm under my back and one under my knees. It’s dark now.
Nearby, Rakel is making another trip with a body.
“You’re okay,” she says. “Are you hungry?”
“Don’t patronize me.” I’m starving. “Where are you taking the bodies?”
Olexandrya follows the street, keeping a steady stride.
“We’re making a graveyard outside the village,” she says. “It’ll probably be a few days before we’re done.”
I drift in and out of unconsciousness as she keeps walking. Time feels disconnected. I get glimpses of a night sky and of a small room painted in moonlight. Olexandrya is there consistently. Rakel and Pepper are shifting blurs.
It’s from that haze that my master’s voice emerges.
“Aerida. I am here. I have found you.” The voice crackles like thunder. Passive, distant, and rumbling.
I don’t see the small room I’m in. I see darkness rolling like a tide. His form is skeletal, and his eyes are twin pits of shifting blue.
“Master.” My voice is small. “I’m sorry. I… I haven’t succeeded. I haven’t…” I’m not sure what to say. I’m not even certain how to explain my situation. I haven’t died. I survived my suicide mission.
“You have done well.”
What?
“Remain where you are. Trust me Aerida. This is the path that leads to my victory. As long as you do as you will.”
“What? Do you mean with them? What are you saying?”
My eyes snap open and I’m in the room again. Cold daylight pours through the window, forcing me to shield my eyes. Oh, I can move my arm.
My head is spinning. My master’s words have left me at a loss. I don’t understand what he wants. Have I not betrayed him? Does he know about my possession of Olexandrya’s soul? Is that what he refers to? Does he not want me to die so it will kill her?
Olexandrya’s head is facedown on the bed. She’s kneeling next to it for some reason. I shift slightly, putting a bit of space between us.
Rakel and Pepper are sharing the other bed; a tangle of limbs.
I was right. He’s planning something. Did he plan for this? What if he expected Olexandrya to undercut my sacrifice to begin with? Did he know she would split her soul to save me? Then, why would my dying not be his optimal move?
What would he want more than Olexandrya’s death?
I stare at the ceiling, flexing my newly healed arm. The bone shifts a bit when I move it. That can’t be normal.
Though I may not see it clearly; I still have a role.