I cleared a space in the dirt, arranged the sticks into a pyramid, found two straight sticks to rub together, and ran into a problem.
I sighed, long and hard, then said: “Hey. Wake up.”
It didn’t respond.
“I need your help. If we don’t start a fire tonight we’ll freeze.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I just need you to give me an arm—and this time, don’t—”
It dissipated the shadow around my stump and made an arm in its place.
“Prick,” I muttered through gritted teeth. It snickered, and siphoned my pain into our HP.
I grabbed my right arm with my left and positioned it to hold the stick in place. I was able to get the fire started with some difficulty, just as the sun was setting.
I cleared the rocks and grass from the ground next to the fire, took my scabbard off my belt, and laid down. I was exhausted, despite having rested earlier in the day.
I closed my eyes, but a thought occurred to me. “Hey demon, do you have to sleep when I sleep?”
A chill ran up my spine. “If you do anything while I sleep I’m bringing us both straight to the asylum for an exorcism.”
Its answer satisfied me, and I closed my eyes again.
“That’s what you are.”
“I thought your people didn’t have names. What should I be calling you instead?”
“What if I gave you a real name? Something unique to you?”
It seemed offended. “Why would you do that?”
“Well, just to differentiate you from every other demon—”
“I am not different from them, though. I am the same as every other Lesser Demon.”
I frowned. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
It paused for a moment.
“There must be something unique about you, something that no other demon has.”
“It is a symbol of equality,” it said with defiance. “Identical names and identical units.”
“Fine. I’ll call you ‘it,’” I said, expecting it to protest. It did not, and actually seemed pleased with my response.
“No. I want to sleep.”
“Fine.”
A dull, cold feeling came out of my head, as if it was slithering out of my brain and over my skin. I flinched as the feeling gathered on my stomach.
I sighed, exhausted by its antics. “That’s a belly button.”
“In the womb, there’s a sort of…tube, and it connects a human to their mother. It breaks off when they’re born and the belly button is left behind.”
“Stay out of that!” I snapped, blood rushing to my cheeks. The demon bolted all the way back to my chest. “That’s…sensitive.”
A sudden wave of astonishment came off of It.
“Just shut up and steer clear of that area.”
“What makes demon reproduction so clean and pure, then?”
I smirked. “Oh, so you’re like termites?”
It went silent as indignation pulsed off of it.
I rolled over, satisfied at having gotten the last word. “Let’s go to bed now, It.”
When I awoke, I was standing knee-deep in a pool of blood.
My sword weighed heavy in my left hand. My right hand was clawed and shadowy. Bodies were strewn all around me. I recognized them. Friends. Family. People I’d fought for and protected. All floating, dead, in that lake of blood.
I was in my hometown. I didn’t know how I got there. It was barely recognizable. It was razed to the ground.
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I’d done it. Or rather, it had done it, using my body.
My sword slipped from my hand, quietly disappearing into the red liquid. I sank to my knees, the blood soaking up into my shirt.
I shook my head, slowly and repeatedly. “Why? Why did you do it?”
My eyes shot open, returning me to the real world with a jolt. The campfire smoldered beside me, and each frantic breath I took smelled like smoke.
I clutched my head. Its voice was the last thing I wanted to hear right now.
It seemed to do a quick telepathic scan of the area, and upon finding no other demons, turned its attention back to me. <...did you have a nightmare?>
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry already, please just leave me alone.”
It paused.
I tucked my head between my knees, trying to block out the world.
It stayed silent for a long time. The fire burned down to its coals, and birds started to chirp in the trees. The sky turned from black to navy blue.
I stood up and brushed the dust off my clothes.
I sighed long and hard. “You haven’t done anything worthy of being kicked out yet.” The thought that it could was nerve-wracking, but it hadn’t actually borne any ill will towards me yet. Petty spite, occasionally, but no actual evil intentions.
<...thank you.>
I picked up my scabbard and tried to put it back on my belt, struggling with the clasp. After a moment of observation, the demon helped, moving our shadow hand to hold it in place.
“I’m sorry for being so…flippant about killing the other demon yesterday. That was out of line.”
“I know. But I should’ve been more sympathetic. That must have been…difficult for you.”
I started to walk, making my way north. I knew there was a road that way that we would eventually hit. My plan was to find it and follow it to the nearest town. Maybe I would even find a wagon I could hitch a ride with. Speaking of, there was a slight problem.
“We’re going to have to find another way to cover up this stump. This—” I moved my shoulder, moving our shadow arm up and down. “Is a dead giveaway.”
[NAME] Garreth Collman/Lesser Demon
[HP] 25/110
[MANA] 11/11
[PAIN] 0/10
[LVL] 2
[SKILLS]
Devour Suffering: (MANA: 1) reduce a target’s PAIN stat and use it to increase your own HP or MANA at a rate of 1 per sec
Shape Shadow: (MANA: 1) create any shape out of shadow. Shape must be connected to the body in some way. When shape is dissipated, gain 1 MANA.
I took note of all the changes. I could infer that our level increased after killing the guard, which boosted our HP and MANA stats. Resting seemed to have replenished our MANA and HP by about 10 each, as well.
“Do you think we’ve healed enough that we can go without a wound covering?”
It seemed to feel around the wound with its shadow, making me wince.
“Based on your experience, how much HP do you think we'll need before it closes?”
I frowned. That was more than I was expecting. “Alright. Can you dissipate the arm? But don't–.”
It dissipated the shadow arm, keeping the wound covering in place.
“...Thank you.” I stopped walking, took off my shirt, and held one end in my teeth to tear it into strips. Then I wrapped those around the stump, on top of the shadow covering. My shirt had already been soaked in blood, so it actually looked very convincing. “Now if we run into anyone else they'll have less questions.”
We came across the road and started to walk along it. As the hours wore on, however, I started to be keenly aware of my empty stomach. It was unlikely that I would be able to walk all the way to town. Luckily, I soon heard a cart coming down the road, headed in my same direction.
[NAME] Saul Bure
[HP] 100/100
[MANA] 0/0
[PAIN] 0/10
[NAME] Sandy Bure
[HP] 100/100
[MANA] 0/0
[PAIN] 0/10
I jumped as the stat blocks of the two humans driving it were beamed into my brain. I waved down the driver, catching the attention of the woman sitting next to him as well. They looked like farmers.
“Woah!” the driver exclaimed, pulling on the reins to stop his horse. “Are you all right over there?”
“No, not really,” I called back. “I need a ride to the closest town. That’s Saybrook, right?”
“Yeah, that’s where we’re headed.”
The woman, seemingly his wife, spoke up. “Careful, Saul, he might be a bandit.”
“Lookit ‘im, Sandy. He’s obviously not a bandit.”
“I’m a mercenary,” I said. “I was dungeon-delving on a job and it all went wrong.”
“I think I’ve seen ‘im around the town, Sandy.”
“Fine!” She crossed her arms.
Saul motioned me forward and I climbed into the back of the wagon. It was empty, aside from a satchel and a little girl who looked to be about 5.
“Hello,” I said. She waved to me. Her mother was watching me like a hawk.
The wagon started to move again at a good pace. I would probably be able to make it to Saybrook before I passed out from hunger.
The little girl took a roll from the satchel and bit into it. She noticed me looking at it like a starving dog and produced another one to give to me. I thanked her and took it, despite her mother giving me an evil eye.
We crested a hill, and were greeted by the sight of two bodies, hanging limp from a tree branch. Scrawled just below their dangling feet was a sign: “mimics beware.”
Fear and revulsion radiated from a corner of my mind—a symptom of my demon reacting to a scene it hadn’t been expecting.
The little girl stared, eyes wide. Her mother gently turned her away from the scene, cooing “Look away dear.”
I’d seen this sort of thing before. Mimic demons sometimes infiltrated towns disguised as humans, and only the harshest of punishments awaited them when they were eventually rooted out.
Saul shaded his eyes from the sun to get a better look. “Do we know those two?” he muttered to his wife.
“No, I don’t think we do. They must not have been in town for very long.”
“Well. Gives me confidence in our clergy’s abilities, at least, to have ‘em sniffed out so fast.”
“Seems they’re very good at it,” she said, and took the opportunity to smile back at me with narrowed eyes.
A pit formed in my stomach.
Saybrook was a frontier town, the type where the only thing made out of stone was the well. There was one street, lined with a general store, a mercenary station, a smithy, a watchtower, and a sanctuary. Today, it was packed with people, all listening to one man standing on the sanctuary steps.
I stood up to look at the crowd and was immediately hit with a wave of information, overwhelmed with the stat blocks of about fifty people at once. I grimaced, biting my tongue, and tried not to sway on my feet. I got off the wagon by sitting down and sliding onto my feet on the ground while the preacher’s words wafted over the congregation.
“---and we simply cannot allow evil to infiltrate our ranks, as it has been so desperately trying to do since the beginning of time itself. But I have good news, brothers and sisters; we are living in a time when the Demon Queen is awakened! You might not see, right now, how this is good news, but I am here to tell you that you are lucky to be able to witness the Paragon’s Chosen Heroes fighting against the forces of evil. There are no other people that have more faith than those who live in the time between the Demon Queen’s awakening and her sealing by the heroes.”
A murmur of “amens” rippled through the crowd. I remembered a time when I would go to my town’s sanctuary for every sermon, eagerly listening to the preacher extol the virtues of the Paragon and her heroes. I couldn’t remember when I’d stopped going so often. Perhaps when I graduated from the Fighter’s College and started spending more of my days out in the field, nowhere near a sanctuary.
I thanked the Bure family and made my way towards the mercenary station.