Lesbians Kill the Demon Queen - Ch11 and Ch12

Chapter 11

More than anything else, isolation characterized the days following the departure from Cyres. In the wake of whatever orders Renault and Priscilla had been issued, both had changed. The softness Ren had shown Lyra just before departing in Cyres had vanished, replaced by a grim stoicism which gripped him tightly. He said little, practically avoiding Lyra, jaw clenched and eyes always cast ahead, down the road toward whatever destiny awaited. Priscilla, too, lacked her usual priggish, pretentious air. More than anything else, she seemed tired, plagued by nervousness and uncertainty. Try as she might, Lyra had been unable to pry the reason behind the sudden change in attitude from either. She was simply told, with varying degrees of politeness, that the matter was of the utmost secrecy, and to be kept within the ranks of the church. Of course, this only fueled Lyra’s curiosity. She was dying to know just what Renault and Priscilla’s superiors had told the pair behind closed doors to make them both so crestfallen.

Obviously, further discussion of the matter with Renault or Priscilla would be fruitless, and Trevor was a wall. An old soldier to his core, perhaps being left uninformed was business as usual. So, as fate would have it, the only companion in commiseration Lyra had was Maya. At night, when the carriage would stop and the group would settle to rest, Maya and Lyra would find time away from the others to begrudgingly trade complaints, speculation, and venom. And from morning ‘til dusk, Lyra would sit in the carriage quietly and drive herself mad with speculation and anxiety.

Three days passed like that, long and dull, flowing into nights where the only person Lyra could turn to for any sort of companionship was the woman who had nearly gotten her killed. Still, loath as she was to admit it, Lyra couldn’t deny that being in Maya’s vicinity had begun to lose the distinctive edge it had once carried. The bite in her voice was lessening; the feeling that at any moment Maya might lunge at Lyra, dagger in hand, had begun to ebb. Lyra had engaged the smirking ne'er-do-well in conversation for three nights in a row, and not once had she developed even the slightest of headaches.

As they traveled, signs of life grew increasingly scarce. First, there was the slow trend away from those towns and hamlets flourishing in the shadow of Cyres, and toward countryside. Then, things took a darker turn. Outside of troop movements, proper patrols were rare west of Cyres, and as the border loomed ever closer, the population became sparser still; not from sprawling farmland, but from desolation. Salted earth and burned homes dotted the countryside. It was humbling, to say the least. When Lyra set out, she had told herself these were the people she would be fighting for. But staring out across the pillaged countryside, she wondered what was left to save.

By the end of the third day, the border loomed close. Before departing from the city, Renault had chosen a marshland to the northwest as their crossing point. The area would be a nightmare for any sizable force to traverse; what passed for roads in that region were sunken, with no attempt to maintain them in years. As such, it was an ideal location to cross while avoiding any large deployment of Selian's soldiers. Still, nowhere along the border was truly undefended, and while slogging through mud and muck they would be easy targets for any passing patrols. When the time came to cross, the mood was tense. It was early; the dawn broke, and Lyra had barely slept a wink. The ruined road had become too difficult to traverse without both lightening the carriage’s load and scouting for any incoming obstacles. In their best approximation of silence, all save Trevor disembarked from the carriage. With Renault and Priscilla leading the way on foot, and Maya and Lyra watching the rear, the group proceeded cautiously through the worst of it all, and over the border.

Each step was tense, every creak of the wheels carried far in the morning quiet. There was little in the way of light; their lanterns had been doused so as to hide in the dark. Every eye was sharp, hunting for some indication of the enemy, but the true foe was the terrain itself. Time and time again, the wheels would get stuck in mud which had crept over the road’s edges, tangled in overgrown weeds, or caught against crumbled stone. Watching for such hazards proved nearly impossible; Maya was only feet away from Lyra, yet she could barely make out Maya's face, beaded in sweat from the effort of pushing through their third mud rut. A labored sigh of exhaustion escaped Lyra’s lips.

“You too, hmm?” Maya whispered.

“Surprised?” Lyra asked.

In the dark, Lyra could barely make out the grin spreading on Maya’s face. A quiet chuckle tickled the air around them. “I just figured you’d have some magical solution to this.”

“You’d be right, but for some reason Renault has ‘commanded’ me to not use my magic until he says otherwise. Won’t say a word about why, either.” Chewing her lips, Lyra cast a glare in Ren’s direction, not that she could see him through the blackness.

Maya scoffed, “what is he, your father? Why listen to him?”

“Obviously something happened in Cyres. He wouldn’t do this without reason. And I’m guessing he knows something that he can’t tell me.” Even Lyra wasn’t convinced by that excuse.

“Can’t, or won’t? Seriously, what’s he going to do if you just lift this carriage out of the mud with a wave of your hands and carry it the rest of the way?”

With a bow of her head, and an exhale in frustration, Lyra answered. “It’s not him. It’s the people he gets his orders from, they aren’t the kind of people I want to cross,” she admitted. “Not unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

After a quick glance ahead, Maya took a step toward Lyra, leaning in close and ducking her head conspiratorially. “Something is definitely up; you see that, right?”

It took effort to bite back a scornful bark of laughter. Of course Lyra saw it, how could she not? She’d known Ren practically her whole life and he’d never treated her like this. She’d been simmering over it day in day out, with barely any opportunity to let any of it out. And Lyra had tried; she’d tried hard to not let that affect her confidence in Ren. But three days of it had worn her down. “Say what’s on your mind, Maya,” she hissed.

“He’s lying to us, Lyra. I mean, think about it. We’re supposed to be hopping the border to sabotage their supply lines and the like, right? Why the fuck are we crossing here, then? Sure, we want to cross somewhere with few patrols, but we drove three days out of our way to get here; you think we’re anywhere near where we need to be to do that?” As though fate itself wished to prove Maya’s point, the caravan’s front right wheel took that moment to get stuck against a particularly large piece of debris. “I promise you there are no supply lines anywhere near here. And this sure as hell isn’t their breadbasket. For that matter, why the hell are we taking a slow, clunky carriage for this? Not the sort of thing that lends itself well to ambushes or hit and run.”

Ahead, Renault let out a soft groan as he heaved a piece of rubble out of the way, clearing the road. For just a moment, the moonlight caught Renault’s face. Lyra watched him, the grim concentration written on his tight lips and furrowed brow. It was the same look he had worn for days, the same that had been written across his face when he had brushed Lyra aside time and time again. “Heㅡhe must have had a reason. A good one.”

“We’re risking our lives, Lyra, and going in blind now, too. And now you’re not even allowed to do magic? What’s the point of you even being here?” For a moment, Maya’s growl rose above a whisper. She paused for a moment, tense, moving with starling silence, then relaxed.

“Fine, I admit, loath as I am to get even more on the church’s bad side, this thing with my magic is strange, concerning, even.” Lyra groaned, and slouched forward in resignation. “Along with everything else you’ve mentioned,” she conceded.

“Look, you and I have had our differences. I’m not forgetting what you’ve done. But I don’t trust church boy, and I especially don’t trust his church. You and I are clearly being bent over the table on this, and I suggest we take action. I’m willing to set aside past grudges for now to ensure we both get out of this. If we work together, we can figure out what’s really going on; it might save our lives.”

Something about that didn’t sit right with Lyra. She wasn’t like Maya. She was important. Hand-picked for this. They wouldn’t, they couldn’t cut her out like this. “We are not the same, Maya,” Lyra hissed. “This mission is important; they wouldn’t send people like me on it if it weren’t.”

“I guess that leash of yours is shorter than I thought. And I have to wonder if you’re nearly as important as you think, all things considered. Will you be turning me in, then? If so, I suggest you wait until we’re out of this; I do my best work in the dark.” Maya turned away, her hand conspicuously traveling to her hip, fingering the hilt of the same flamberge she’d taken in Cyres.

For a moment, Lyra considered heating the hilt, showing Maya she wasn’t to be threatened like that. Then calmed herself. The mission came first. Petty squabbling was beneath her. “Do whatever you want, but don’t expect me to defend you when you get caught.”

“Fine, as an act of goodwill, I’ll let you know what I find out. Can’t have you dying on me, at least, not until you give me back what’s mine.” With that, Maya took another step toward her end of the carriage, and faded into the shadows; the only indication of her continued presence was the light squelching of her boots through the mud-soaked ground.

From there the marching continued in silence, with little in the way of incident save the occasional navigation issue. They continued onward for nearly two hours. Slowly, the ground became more and more traversable. The early rays of morning were peeking over the horizon when the group finally happened upon a patch of dry earth leading toward a ruined tower, half sunken into the marshland around it. Renault signaled for a halt, and took stock. After a moment of thought, he spoke, keeping his voice low and hushed. “We’ve crossed, I know that much. This is enemy territory. But I think we all could use some rest.” Pensively, he cast his gaze toward the tower. “It’s risky; we don’t know what we’ll find in there, perhaps someone, or something is squatting. But it’s the only shelter we’re going to find.” Not waiting for any confirmation, he turned and began carefully making his way toward the tower. Wordlessly, the group followed close after him, Trevor and the carriage bringing up the rear.

To her left, Lyra heard a quiet snort of laughter. Beside her, Maya was staring up at the tower with an amused expression. “So,” she mused. “This is Thaylene. The great seat of ancient civilization. The oldest nation in the world? Home to some of the greatest works of art and architecture history has ever seen? Can’t say I’m impressed by a people too dense to realize you don’t build castles over marshland.”

“As though you would know anything about achievement,” Priscilla muttered coldly.

“And a bunch of dead people with more manpower than good sense do? I think not.” Maya hardly spoke with anything resembling a whisper. Amusement and stinging sarcasm slithered through each word.

Under different circumstances, Lyra might have laughed aloud at the expression of pure annoyance on Priscilla’s face. “If you knew anything about your history, you would know that this place was once fertile grasslands, but when Queen Selian conquered Thaylene, a horrible storm raged in this place for months on end, drowning the whole region.”

Maya scoffed, and waved her hand dismissively. “That sounds like a great story to make up so people don’t realize you’re an imbecile who builds castles on marshland.”

Though the immediate threat of discovery seemed passed, Lyra was also fairly certain it would be best to avoid a shouting match, so before Priscilla could respond she came in with her. “It’s not just here that’s waste and ruin, Maya. It’s been over a hundred years since Selian rose to conquer Thaylene from whichever hellish plane birthed her; now all that’s left is deserted, crumbling cities and war camps. The entire country is a soulless, cultureless wasteland.” There was a gentle patience in her tone, not because of any fondness for Maya, but Lyra did know well that any sort of pleasantry toward the thief would make Priscilla’s skin crawl.

Keeping her eyes trained on Pris, wearing a biting smirk, Maya replied. “Yes yes, I know the story. One moment the happy, prosperous people of Thaylene are living their happy, inconsequential little lives. Then the next, a rift opens up from hell itself, and an army of demons led by the greatㅡand at the time yet untitledㅡQueen Selian come pouring out to sow destruction in their wake. It’s a heartbreaking story, poor innocent souls,” Maya cooed. At that, Lyra nearly choked. It was hard to stay mad at someone capable of so expertly goading Priscilla.

The rage behind Priscilla’s narrowed eyes was immediately apparent, her voice a low growl. “They were hardly innocent. Selian was summoned, brought to this world to sweep the entire continent under Thaylene’s command. Their hubris in thinking they could control a force that destructive is why we’re here today. And we’ve been paying for their foolish mistakes ever since. But you know that, don’t you?”

“You caught me, I just like hearing the sound of your voice, Pris.” Maya blew a kiss, then turned her focus ahead. Little else was said as they approached the tower. Tension ran high as the group crossed the threshold and into its dark, abandoned halls. Wordlessly, Renault nodded to Trevor, who departed to scout the area. Half an hour later, he returned and gave the all clear. With practiced efficiency, camp was set, and Renault ordered everyone to get what rest they could. There was ample room within the tower, and as Trevor labored over the makings of a fire, Lyra watched Maya take her bedroll and retreat deep into the dark recesses of the cave. Sitting on their bedrolls near the fledgling fire, Renault and Priscilla spoke in hushed voices.

The conversation with Maya flashed back into her mind, Lyra’s anger blooming anew as she approached the pair. Deliberately and conspicuously, Lyra dragged her bedroll toward the two of them and sat heavily. Calmly, Ren turned and eyed her. “Is there something you need, Lyra?”

“I’d like to know what’s going on; what happened in Cyres?” she asked flatly, doing her best to create a tone that said ‘or else’ without going so far as to imply an ‘or else what.’

“Lyra, we’ve had this conversation, I’m not at liberty to discussㅡ”

“Cut the bullshit, Ren. You practically fucking begged me not to come on this thing, so worried you were about my wellbeing. Now something is clearly up and you won’t explain shit. What are we doing out here? Really?” Lyra had never spoken to Ren that way. Come to think of it, she’d never really spoken to any kind of authority that way. Biting remarks sure, mocking defiance, all the time, but outright insubordination? Never. And given the look on both Renault and Priscilla’s faces, it seemed to be a good look for her.

Surprisingly, it was Priscilla who spoke first, in a tone that was surprisingly sober. “Lyra, you know well I can’t stand you. So take my word for it when I say that if I could tell you, I would. But it’s bigger than that. Bigger than you, bigger than any of us.”

“You don’t trust me. You think I’ll compromise the mission. Is it because I brought on Maya? I can keep her under control,” Lyra insisted.

“It’s not her that I’m worried about keeping under control, Lyra.” Ren fixed her with a hard gaze.

For a moment, she considered arguing back. Frankly, she wasn’t sure Ren was worth it anymore. Wordlessly, Lyra stood, snatched her bedroll, and turned. Over her shoulder, she heard Ren call out some choked apology; Lyra didn’t bother to stay and listen, storming off into the darkness. She rounded a corner, and at the edge of her vision, caught sight of Maya casually lounging on her bedroll, sharpening a blade. Without taking a moment to stop, Lyra whispered, “I’m in,” and continued to an isolated spot to rest. Despite everything, sleep took her easily, and Lyra dreamt.

She was a prisoner, kept high in a tower by some powerful foe. Every day Lyra was locked in a struggle to free herself with her captor, but she knew she couldn’t win. Still, the more time her captor spent having to stop Lyra from escaping and slitting their throat in the night, the less time they had to do their evil elsewhere. And besides, someone was coming to free her. She knew that. And she knew they were close, storming the battlements so to speak. Alone with her captor, Lyra sat waiting; the two of them glaring in silent hatred. And then, her rescuers arrived. With weapons in hand, they charged; for a moment, Lyra was truly hopeful. Her captor would be slain, and she would be free. Pain exploded in Lyra’s chest, she looked down to find her rescuer had run their sword right through her heart.

As she bled out on the cold stone, she saw a man. He was covered nearly head to toe in dark, loose clothing. Little of his face was visible under the wide-brim hat he wore, colored a black as deep and impenetrable as the rest of his garb, save the cuffs and collar of a burgundy shirt peeking out from under his long cloak. Just below his knees, the end of his cloak met a pair of sturdy, polished leather traveler's boots. She had seen this man before. Her vision began to fade, and, just before darkness took her, he spoke. “Remember, Lyra, nobody can decide your fate but yourself. You alone get to choose how this ends.” Just as she was about to mutter some bitter remark about how worthless and vague such advice was, the dream ended.

Her eyes adjusted slowly. Dim torchlight played dancing shadows against the stone wall. Crouching over Lyra, was Maya, a stern look on her face. “I did some snooping. Found something interesting,” she whispered. “It might be the reason why Ren doesn’t want you using your magic.”

“It couldn’t wait until I woke up on my own? I was having… a lovely dream,” Lyra muttered.

“We’re headed out soon anyway. Needed to get you alone. I looked through church boy’s things, and I think I found his orders from Cyres; they had the fancy seal and everything.” Nervously, Maya glanced over her shoulder. “I didn’t have time to look over the whole document, but I did pick up one interesting tidbit. Your magic, it’s… shall we say, unique? There are a bunch of important people all worked up over it trying to figure out how it works and where it came from, correct? I’m having to guess ‘cause these church documents don’t refer to you by name. At least, not by Lyra anyway.”

Lyra winced, hoping she was wrong about what that meant, and oddly worried about what Maya might think should the thief find out about her own past. “All of that is correct about me, yes,” she answered, struggling to keep the nerves from showing in her voice.

“Well, according to Renault’s fancy little piece of paper, there’s a new working theory for where you got your powers.” There was a long pause as Maya struggled for words. ”They think that… well. They think you somehow got them from the Demon Queen.”

Chapter 12

“And you’re sure this isn’t a trap?” That must have been the fourth time Nina had asked.

“As certain as we can be of anything. We’re hardly the first to ‘defect’ and we have people on the other side of the border who helped arrange this,” Kesh groaned, midway through helping haul Thread up a particularly untraversable rock face. “We’ve arranged a meeting point at a nearby watchtower controlled by Selian’s army. The escort there will take us over the border and to a—relatively—nearby township. If our contacts are correct, the governor there has expressed an interest in supporting our cause. Hopefully we can use him to get to Selian. Just try to look, y’know, like defectors.”

“And how do we do that?” Byron asked as he scrambled up after Thread.

Kesh leaned over the rock face, extending a hand to Zelle, who took his hand as hauled themself up. The two stood, dusting themselves off, and Kesh turned to Byron. “Well, it would help if you could show off your demon side a bit.”

Zelle gently laid a hand on Byron’s shoulder and shook their head. “I’ve been trying with him, studying his condition. We’ve made a lot of progress over the last few days, but so far we still can’t get him to shift when there isn’t any danger. I’m working on something that might help with that, and I’m close, but I think I need to study him actually in that form first.”

“Which means…”

“Unfortunately,” Zelle winced.

Kesh nodded grimly. “Well, as much as I’d like this entire ordeal to go smoothly, something tells me you’ll get your opportunity eventually. Just probably not until we’re over the border.” He cast his gaze eastward, and motioned for the group to follow him along the long, winding foothills.

As he started down the unkempt trail, Byron found himself puzzling over Kesh’s plan and comments. “I’m a little lost,” he began. “If we’re ‘defecting’ and aligning ourselves with one of Selian’s governors, why are so worried about danger?”

Kesh grumbled thoughtfully, then cast his glance toward Nina. “It’s probably best if you explain, they’re your informants.”

Nina fixed Byron with an intense gaze and chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Something’s going on across the border. I’ve been exchanging letters with the defectors over there; apparently everyone is on edge. There are rumors going around about towns being destroyed, patrols being ambushed, supply lines being disrupted. Whoever’s doing it is organized, and their intel is good. They strike quickly, do their dirty work, and leave. Apparently fighting has broken out between some of Selian’s regiments. We’re not sure exactly what’s going on, but Selian herself could give us a personal escort and we would still be in danger.”

Kesh gave a slow nod, as though to confirm Nina’s intel, then glanced backward toward Byron and gave a tight grin. “Don’t worry about it too much, though. We’re hardly some important military or logistical target. Just need to keep a low profile and hope this governor can help us out. Chances are we’ll run into trouble at some point, but hey, that’ll at least give Zelle the data they need, right?”

As far as Byron could tell, Kesh was either making a sincere attempt to assuage any worries Byron might have, or trying to inject some sort of levity into the conversation. Neither worked particularly well. Still, to keep any undue worry from being cast his way, Byron gave a weak smile and a nod, then continued onward in silence. The next few hours passed uneventfully, with little to mark the passage of time save the occasional exchange of quiet musings, or difficult to pass piece of terrain.

Byron spent those morning hours contemplating the mess he’d found himself in. He felt very much like he was living within the light of a single, brilliant lantern. A lantern which blinded him to everything ahead of and behind him, leaving Byron with only the option to press forward, and hope he wasn’t wandering to a doom he lacked the knowledge or understanding to foresee. Though, to be fair, he at the very least wasn’t so blind as to not expect danger. Still, Byron wished he had more of a reason to press on than a combination of lacking anywhere else to go, and a vague sense that there was ‘something’ going on which he was somehow a part of. Admittedly, there was also a sense of loyalty to the people he’d surrounded himself with. But the cynical parts of Byron felt that continuing to throw himself into danger for a bunch of people he barely knew or a cause he barely understood was foolish.

A light brush against his arm pulled Byron from his contemplation and back to reality. His head turned to follow the sensation, and found that Thread had crept up on him while he walked. Just under the brim of Thread’s hat, Byron could make out his eyes staring off into the far distance as he stroked his chin contemplatively. “I told you,” he began slowly. “I told you days ago, that when there was time, we would speak of dreams.”

“You did,” Byron answered.

“Three times now, once a few days before we met, once the night we met, and once last night, I have been drawn into someone else’s dreams. A woman named Lyra. When this happens, I always have a message to deliver. I am not certain where I get this message from, I just know it in the moment. Each time both the message, and my own presence in the dream have become clearer, more stable, more lucid.” Thread paused for a moment, his eyes shifting to peer down at Byron from under the brim of his hat, fixing him with a searching gaze.

For some reason Byron felt nervous under that gaze, a bead of sweat collected on his brow as he stammered out a reply. “I... okay. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, Thread, but why tell me this?”

“I cannot help but feel that this Lyra is connected to us, to what we are doing. Perhaps she is an ally, perhaps an enemy, but I believe that before our journey comes to an end, our paths will cross.” Thread paused, and Byron was about to point out that if Thread was being somehow drawn into this woman’s dreams, the fact that he, at the very least, was connected to her was quite obvious, but before he could speak, Thread continued. “As for you, Byron: as I mentioned, the night we met, I had my second of three dreams. And, if I am not mistaken, you, too, had an odd dream. An unpleasant one, too. What can you tell me about it?”

Byron grew quiet, wracking his memory for scraps of the dream. “There was a castle,” he answered uncertainly. “I was in the castle with someone else. I was in danger, and so was she. There was something I wanted from her, but she wouldn't cooperate and I…” As he thought of that dream, that place, that name, burning anger surged through him.

He felt his skin sizzle and glow, a pulse of magic within him, the urge to harm someone. Something sharp was pricking at his palms, and a dull thought in the back of his head told him it was the claws growing out from his clenched fist. Fire burned behind his eyes and tension pushed and pulled at his limbs. Strangely, though, even steeped in fury, it felt good, freeing to feel his body twist and contort into something stronger, better. Rage and elation blended into exhilaration as burning blood pumped in his veins. He took a step toward Thread, fighting the urge to lunge.

A sharp explosion of pain in his face brought Byron back to reality. He staggered backward and caught himself against a nearby tree. Surprisingly, despite the pain he felt calmer, the shock to his system clearing his head; he stared ahead as his vision refocused. Before him, Thread was lightly shaking out his hand and examining it for any bruising. Seemingly satisfied, he looked up to Byron. “Are you with me again, Byron? You lost your head for a moment.”

Closing his eyes and shaking his head vigorously, Byron squinted through spotty vision back at Thread. “I… sorry,” he breathed, hunching forward. “For a second, it’s like I was there.”

“It is fine, Byron. Worrying, though. Be honest, were you actually going to attack me?” He raised an eyebrow, looking Byron up and down.

“I don’t know; I don’t think so,” Byron took a deep breath, leaning against the rock behind him and blinking hard as he drifted back to reality. Where had that come from? The rage, the violence, he had never felt that way before. Something about that dream, it had lit a fire in him. He shuddered at the thought of what he’d wanted to do.

“Hopefully Zelle can help you get this under control. Are you alright, by the way?” Thread asked. “I am told I hit hard.”

Byron nodded, giving a dismissive wave of his hand. “You may have given me a black eye, but it’s not like I recognize myself in the mirror to begin with. I’ll live.”

Thread winced sympathetically, and continued, “I suppose it is a shame Zelle is up ahead with Kesh. They might have been able to learn something from your turning,” Thread mused; Byron had to take a moment to process just how nonchalant he sounded. “As I was saying, this dream of yours, I cannot shake the feeling that it was the same one I found myself drawn into. I’m uncertain why you were there with Lyra and I when you haven’t been present for the other two, but I suppose that is a mystery for us to solve, is it not?”

Breathing a heavy sigh, Byron tried and failed to make any sense of the matter. There were certainly implications to Thread’s speculations, but what those implications actually meant was far beyond Byron. And, yet it gave him some manner of satisfaction, of reassurance. Without a past, Byron felt lost; in his present, he felt like nobody at all. Chief among his feelings were confusion and a distinct lack of place. But the idea that he had a future, an important future, a destiny of some sort, comforted him. At the end of the day, he would get to be someone. Perhaps even someone who he understood, who he felt comfortable as. Sadly, that didn’t make things any less overwhelming. Put simply, there was a lot of pressure. Between Zelle’s nightly study of his demonic essence, and Thread’s revelation, Byron was left with the distinct sense that he was supposed to do something, without any indication of what.

“Are you alright, Byron?” Thread asked.

“Yeah, sorry. It’s a lot to think about,” he answered.

“It is, yes. I wish I had answers for you, instead of more questions. I’m sure you already have those in no short supply; I’ll leave you to think.” Without another word, Thread quickened his pace, joining Kesh and Zelle at the front of the group. Byron sighed; he appreciated the gesture, but a quiet moment with his thoughts didn’t sound particularly welcome at the moment. Fortunately, his problem was solved before it truly began.

“Sorry for getting you into this mess,” Nina called from behind him.

With a soft chuckle, Byron glanced over his shoulder, and caught her eye. “That’s alright. Believe it or not, I’d rather be here than dead in a ditch on the side of the road.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. There’s a high chance of you winding up dead in a ditch either way so long as you stick with us.” She laughed grimly, and offered a weak, sympathetic smile. “I just... I know coming with us was your choice, but I don’t like the idea that I might be responsible for putting you in unnecessary danger.”

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Besides...” Byron flashed a cocksure grin. “Whatever we’re up against, they don’t stand a chance.”

With a small sigh, Nina shook her head. “I wish I had your confidence.”

Byron shrugged. “I wish this confidence were real instead of an act to make you feel better.” Surprisingly, Nina laughed. She laughed harder than he’d ever seen anyone laugh. Loud and exuberant, she pushed out every last bit of air in her lungs before gasping for air in a loud wheeze, then blushed. And Byron realized he wouldn’t mind hearing her laugh like that more often.

She took a moment to catch her breath, then glanced up at him. “Do you thi—”

Just ahead, Kesh held up his hand, Nina fell silent, she and Byron crept up to join the rest of the group. They stood against a rock face, Kesh pressed against the wall and peering around the corner. All eyes were fixed on him, wondering just what he saw as tense moments ticked by. Kesh’s eye’s focused on something, and narrowed as he hummed in thought, then nodded, and relaxed. He turned to the rest. “At the end of the day, we’re going to have to take a chance here. There’s a small squad of demon soldiers just ahead. They seem to be waiting for someone. The thing is, this isn’t the meeting point. So either something went wrong with the initial meeting point, or we’re about to run into a potentially hostile patrol.”

“What do you think?” Zelle murmured.

Kesh pinched the bridge of his nose thoughtfully. “Going around would be… difficult. We’re looking at a few more hours of travel and if this is our escort, I wouldn’t expect them to wait around that long. Personally I think it’s best that we take the chance and hope for the best. Worst case scenario, well, we weren’t expecting this to be easy.”

“I say we go for it, then,” Nina whispered.

“Any objections?” Kesh asked, looking to each of his companions in turn. When nobody spoke, he nodded. “Alright, then. Be friendly, but be ready. Let’s hope luck is on our side.” He took a deep breath, and stepped out into the open, the rest of the group in tow.

Rounding the corner, Byron caught sight of seven figures. Each wore dark plated steel trimmed with gold and bearing a crimson insignia depicting a crescent moon on the chest. Their faces were covered by metal visors, an inconsistent number of multicolored glowing eyes starting out from each. From each head sprouted a pair of horns. The moment they noticed their company, each soldier wordlessly grasped for their weapons, bearing long, silver tipped spears and fanning out. Still, their posture was entirely defensive; they made no motion to advance. Tense moments passed as Kesh quietly walked into the open, his palms forward. One at a time, he brought his gaze to rest on each soldier, then slowly and clearly spoke. “The mason works til dawn.”

Almost immediately, the tension evaporated, each soldier lowering their weapons. The middle soldier took a single step forward, and looked Kesh in the eye. “But his work is still not done.”

At that, Kesh relaxed as well, motioning to his companions. “Well, it seems we’ve found the right people. Is there a reason we’re here instead of where we were supposed to meet?”

The middle soldier, who had spoken before, removed his helmet, revealing a handsome, ash colored face. Around the outside of his left eye, were four, smaller eyes arranged in a crescent shape. A pair of glittering fangs poked out from his upper lip. He grimaced, and shook his head. “When we arrived at the meeting point, the watchtower there had been demolished and looted. The troops stationed there had been killed. We’re not certain if whoever is responsible is still nearby, but we need to move. Now.”