The slope was muddy, the ground softer than it had been for the last half hour of the journey. The previous week's sporadic rain had washed out the forest trail to a degree that made it a veritable slog of a trip through the Yorhall woods.

Men in the column were struggling, albeit as gracefully as they could, to make it down the gradual slope without losing their footing, their heavy plate armor and underlying chainmail already limiting their movements, even in the best of ideal fighting conditions. Now it made every step a test of balance.

The clouds above were dark, angry gray and black in some places, the sky, muted and gloomy as the storm front continued to move across the region. Such was the typical climate of the Emorian winter, the lush country was alive with vegetation despite the chilly cold months, and though rain had yet to fall all day, Lasha knew it would not be much longer before it did.

She stood silent, watching the honor guard of Prince Eliphas as they hefted their weapons, a mix of every type of sword, lance, and shield shapes, the warriors of his personal guard tailored to no particular fighting style, save for wielding their best-practiced weapons in defense of their lord.

The soldiers continued to pass as Lasha watched them lurch unsteadily like old drunkards through the dark brown mud and muck,

“It's always so pretty this time of year,” she said with clear sarcasm, though without breaking her professional veneer of calm, “though it will add to our travel time.”

Her helmet was latched to her belt, and the golden blonde, back-length hair she was blessed with ran straight to either side of her face. She was dressed similarly to all the other men in the company of forty, etched blue armor with muddied, though glistening gold trim, proud and denoting their honor of escorting the blood of royalty throughout the realms.

“We've been away two years,” a voice came from her side, the voice of a man now, strong but not brutish, one accustomed to being in command, “I think a little more won't kill any more of us,” the crowned prince said with a small smile glancing slightly down and to his side, addressing his captain.

“Hopefully,” he said looking on as a man in the line, Braum, lost his footing and stumbled to the mud, ruining his plate further despite it already being rugged and tarnished after months of campaigning and long marches. A fresh splash of frigid dark grime welcomed the warrior as he landed, not losing grip, however, of his large, axe-bladed halberd as he grunted and swore, picking himself back up and earning a couple of low chuckles and jeers from the other men.

“The men are in good spirits,” Lasha continued, “are you not as well?”

Eliphas thought quietly to himself, he was glad to be within the borders of the civilized world again, that was true enough, but he was, admittedly, not excited to be returning to his place of birth; the fortress capital of Emoria. His family was there, and while those in his company would be glad to return to their own wives, husbands, and children, he instead was anxious about arriving back within the walls of the palace. To a certain degree, he was even dreading it.

The fact remained, however, he was about to be home, back to his, “normal,” life.

“I have a father, who has never respected me awaiting my return. A brother, who, though he'd never actually admit it, has always hated me. And the long-faded memories of a mother, who I've never known.”

A voice called from the rear of the column, indicating the last man was traversing the slope, the formation of chosen veterans trudging along passed the pair as they conversed quietly.

“I am not,” Eliphas paused, glancing to the wet and undulating ground as his thoughts searched for the correct words, looking up at Lasha into her green eyes as he, at last, did so, “Thrilled...To be home, just yet, I think.”

Lasha was a friend of the prince, and this kind of talk came easily to them, especially after nearly a decade of being at first a member of, and then the commander of his own personal escort. She wanted to lift his spirits, she knew the life of a noble was political and complex, but she knew he was strong enough to endure something as simple as that.

“In time Lord,” the blonde woman said curtly, as she commonly was, sharp and to the point.

The prince nodded with a small smile and cast his gaze to the final man, as the blue armored warrior, sporting with pride the crest of Emoria on his cuirass as he passed, the metal dented and the paint scratched in too many places to count, but the golden lion head still defiant and unmistakable. The man nodded as he continued after the pair, and Eliphas nodded back, noting the name etched into the steel on his right shoulder pad. Each of his guards was known to him, even before the company had made for the northern fringes of the empire. They were strong. Experienced. They had seen some of the harshest climates and devilish foes that stalked the known realms, and they had defended their master without hesitation through all hardships and battles.

Lasha narrowed her eyes slightly as the last man walked carefully on, and Eliphas took note of this as he came to the same, worrying conclusion.

“Did you count thirty-seven, guard commander?”

She nodded in return, casting her gaze back up the slope and scanning the hillside for a possible straggler, though she and Eliphas knew instinctively that was not going to be the case. None of the men in the formation had sustained injury the last week's trek, and there was no reason for any member to be falling behind, especially now only a few days from home.

The two made worried eye contact as Eliphas hefted his large, singled bladed battleaxe in his right hand, pulling it free from his back. The prince was not decorated, nor armored in the same fashion as his guard. He wore black, double layered armor plates, with pauldrons on his shoulders spiked with three sharpened studs. A cape of blood red covered his back, and his legs were similarly well-protected from harm with a dark heavy skirt of thick plates. Here and there, battles and names were painstakingly carved into the metal, names of previous wearers of the suit, as well as deeds and wars previously fought. A physical history of his family's legacy through the generations of war and glory, a lineage he now bore with great honor.

The two began to trudge through the mud as Lasha ordered the column to a halt, passing along the order to her second in command to begin a roll-check of its members to find out who was missing.

The boots of the two soldiers made sucking, wet sounds as they rose a fell, scaling slowly up the trail back the way they came and searching to their left and right, the female honor guard reaching for the hilt of her broadsword still nestled inside its scabbard.

Eliphas made it up the hill first hefting his weapon across his shoulders with one hand, Lasha guarding his flank as he watched the trees and bushes for any movement, the two being high up enough now that they could see the troops below organizing themselves for a possible spring to action, finishing roll call.

“Anything?” The prince said quietly, his dark black hair rolling back to the length of his neck, though neatly grouped together and bound.

“No, lord.” Lasha said flatly, “I don't think tha-”

Suddenly there was an explosion from the treeline from both sides, trees and thick limbs of ancient timber detonating and spraying stakes of living bark flying through the air in an instant. Shards of wood cut into Eliphas' shoulder pad as he ducked down, shielding his unprotected face as did Lasha to his side. The pair stumbled as the ground shook beneath their feet, despite the muddied slush of the forest floor.

The bodyguard commander quickly recovered and threw up her helmet, quickly sliding it over her head and rising up, drawing her weapon in one swift and almost elegant motion as the treeline all along their route similarly spew a hailstorm of brush and branches as it had on the hill.

The men of the company rallied at once though they endured some initial casualties from the projectiles, a couple of Emorians writhing in the muck speared by tree parts or struck unconscious, a couple not rising at all, lying still with fatal wounds from the ambush.

Braum was faced down as Lasha began to bellow orders to her unit, a lance of evenly shaped and torn timber protruding from the back of his armor's gorget, the tip covered in bright red blood.

The men were seeking cover from the surprise blast, though as birds and other wildlife took flight into the air, fleeing from the sudden threat, the warriors of Eliphas' host steeled themselves for battle. No second volley of projectiles came, however, and the shaking ground suddenly grew immense as puddles of collected rain shuddered in tremors, as did the bones and blood of everyone in the small convoy.

The trees of the forest were tall, and as a huge bunch of them crashed aside, smashing down into the path of the party blocking the trail and crushing a few members of the guard, the origin of the attack came into view with shocking, unnatural speed. The being came at a sprint, and in an instant, was among the small, by comparison, human defenders.

Arghost was the next man to die, the form of a humanoid, a towering, giant of a thing, slammed it's bare, mud-covered foot onto his body as his ornate suit of cold steel offered him no protection whatsoever against its crushing weight. Gore exploded from beneath the beast's skin in an instant, but as quickly as it came down, it retracted skyward, revealing the mutilated form of the man and running his blood along together with rainwater as both flecked in all directions, flowing back to fill the new, deep footprint.

The unit was disoriented and spread out, the flurry of dangerous wood had broken them apart, but as they tried as best they could to reform their unit posture, they began to form a resistance at once.

Lasha and Eliphas stood stunned and wide-eyed for a few heartbeats, two more of their group dying in as many moments as one was crushed similar to the first victim underfoot, then the other was kicked aside mercilessly like a child's toy as the opposite foot came forward, both bodies being destroyed utterly, and the later flying across the trail and impacting an idle tree with a sickening crunch of bone and metal and a flash of crimson.

Eliphas blinked and stepped forwards as his chest began to surge with adrenaline, his friend also coming free of the shock that had shamefully overcome them both, after they beheld, their vision unimpeded now, what was assaulting them.

“Reform!”

Barked the prince of Emoria, saliva flecking from his mouth and shouting as loudly as his lungs would fire, his voice carrying little though due to the chaos unfolding on the forest trail below.

A laugh came next, from high above, almost like a response to Eliphas' command, the booming chorus coming out and chilling his blood as he made to run down to join the fray and rally his small force.

Warriors with throwing weapons or bow armament, began to loose ammunition, trying with regimented practice to score a wounding shot to maybe an eye or soft point of flesh, but each time an arrow flew or a spear was thrown, its owner was dispatched with frightening ease in a horrifyingly quick response.

A pair of Lasha's men were shooting arrows from enormous longbows, the two separating on instinct to make themselves less of a target, but the thing of pale flesh knelt down next crashing to one huge knee, and slammed one of its fists into the earth, muck and vitae spraying as everyone nearby struggled to keep their balance with the impact. One of the archers survived this strike, that was certain, but he was not spared much longer than his dead comrade, despite his valiant attempt to hurriedly nock a fresh arrow for another shot.

The monster plucked the armored longbowman from the ground as if he weighed nothing at all, the human about the size of a date fruit in its unforgiving grasp. The warrior let out a cry of fear as the attacker's mouth came open, revealing curiously pronounced canine teeth and a dark black pit of an open gullet. Other members of the company now came close enough to stab and swing for the thing's ankles and knelt thigh and knee, but the blows it suffered, that seemed not even to cause any discomfort at all, appeared wholly ineffective.

The blue human fell into the monster's mouth, and a horrifying crunch followed not even a moment later, the teeth of the horned entity smacking, again and again, numerous times in quick succession, before a sloppy and deep swallowing noise followed thereafter, its treat smashed to mush and ready for digestion, heading for its stomach.

The brave souls at the monster's ankles and thigh finally attracted some measure of attention as they were carelessly swatted aside as a group like nothing but annoying insects, a dismissive backhand by the monster's gigantic hand sending them tumbling away, all hard enough that as Lasha and the prince neared, they could hear grim sounds of bones cracking and breaking with a messy, muted snap with the blow.

Eliphas saw a smirk on its face...a smirk... of all damned things. It was female in form, obvious amounts of femininity were clearly discernible, but it was anything but truly human. There were a pair of sharply curved and pointed horns atop either side of its head and it was garbed in some form of black, leather material he could not immediately identify. The woman wore a pair of arm bracers of the same material on her wrists and on her toned and firm biceps, the material stretching with its wearer's movements as cohesion within the group of her prey broke down suffering too many losses.

As Eliphas caught its gaze, he saw more clearly, as if the woman's sheer size and horns were not enough to prove she wasn't human, that she carried an unnatural shade of eye color; glistening, glowing yellow, like poor Braum's shining chest emblem, now face down flat in the dark grime of the disgusting forest floor.

The attacker's right eye narrowed as her opposite grew wider with curiosity, as if excited to find a special member among her new batch of toys, the smirk on her face growing with her newly piqued interest.

Eliphas shuddered as he and Lasha came to a halt, the blonde bodyguard's weapon up and she herself in a fighting stance. A combination of fear and anger grew in the prince's heart, he was truly scared, as he was in every battle he'd ever fought, but now, the seemingly casual destruction of his most trusted men, many of which were his friends, poured hatred over his fear and overshadowed his quickly fading shock.

The female chuckled lowly, and suddenly, as if by some completely undiscovered means of sorcery, the woman shrank in an instant, air pressure booming and a rush of wind blowing outward as she reduced in size falling to a brief crouch.

“Good.” thought Eliphas, without questioning the development further, “small enough to kill now.”

The son of the king roared as his lips exploded with anger, pupils dilating sharply and his legs propelling him forward without another thought. He was vaguely aware Lasha was surging forward next to him, a similar war cry coming from her helmet grill as the last surviving members of the party counter attacked with renewed purpose.

Another member of the group was first to reach the threat, and he swung his large claymore down in a deadly, killing arc as the steel cut through the air at the female beast, now about half a head shorter than Eliphas himself, and slightly shorter than Lasha by comparison.

The woman slid cleanly under the blow and reached behind her back to her waist in response, sliding with a metallic sheen a pair of pitch black, shuriken-like knives. Coming up and forward with surprising speed, the girl slashed upwards into the thin neck area beneath her foe's armor, blood spraying in a jet upon his chest plate with pumping squirts of red as the blades bit like crossed scissor edges.

A second man bounded towards her, undeterred by the death of his fellow and readying his own large sword to swing at the now reduced humanoid girl.

The entity in minimal black coverings twirled one of her knives by its ring handle, the short dagger spinning around neatly several rotations before she hurled it underhand, the throwing weapon zinging with a blur into, and then out the back of the veteran's helmet with terrifying ease, brain matter and gore shooting out the back side of his skull from the exit wound as the dagger zipped through and kept going.

The last man in the guard, other than Lasha and Eliphas, that he could see anyways, died a couple of seconds later, the thrust of his long spear deflecting off one of the woman's dagger blades, as was the second, and third thrust he attempted, each clink and spark of metal resulting in another laugh from the girl who appeared as concerned at this size as she had been at her previous.

As the inhuman female parried away his last attack, she dipped her free hand beneath the same part of her back and slid free another, identical, black shard of metal, replacing it with great skill and inconceivable precision into the eye slit of the lancer's helmet, through his bone, into the meat of his cranium. He toppled over with the crunch of wet bone breaking in a vicious crumple of armor.

And now, Eliphas was upon her.

The prince swung his axe across her chest, intent on bisecting her with the width of his weapon, keeping her at a distance with his superior reach. The black armored lord had fought in battle with many different types of foes, human, and beast alike, but he had never seen such a creature in all his service to his father's empire, not in any of the short twenty-seven years of his life.

The girl sidestepped away, spinning both daggers in her hands, having replaced again the one she'd last thrown, and as the blade of the axe cleared her body, she pressed forward with a savage smile. In close for the anticipated kill.

Eliphas was ready for her though, he had already taken notice of this killer's preferred method of murder, and had adapted as he had been trained to in the flurry of armed combat.

As the creature quickly lunged at him, both knives in hand, he swung and slammed his armored fist into the side of its head, but when Eliphas' gauntlet met his foe's skull, he felt at least one of his knuckles crack upon contact. It was if the thing was made of metal.

The prince let out a growl of pain and swore loudly as the female staggered and a trickle of blood came from its breached temple, the two separating momentarily.

“If I die,” laughed the black lord with his own smile on his face, his dead men and the slaughter around him monetarily forgotten as the rush of battle coursed through his veins, “I die with your blood on my hands, whelp!”

With renewed vigor, and without letting the thing reply, Eliphas attacked once more, swinging well his axe without pause, though his opponent sidestepped neatly in response, the blade of the prince digging into and scything a spray of mud as it missed its intended target. Lasha was in range now too, however, and came in low where her lord had come in high, thrusting and catching a pair of deflections, clangs of sparks following as her sword parried off of one of the other girl's knives in succession.

The remaining pair's enemy was fast, and from the look of her well carved abdominal muscles, and the taut, firm build of her thighs and arms, it was becoming clear as to why. She was not encumbered by bulky protection, and in addition, she was built like an experienced, cutthroat, mercenary.

Lasha came in low from the same side once again, and this it would seem, became her undoing. She struck out with her sword and as she did so, the girl of black, shoulder length hair, sent the cut rebounding off one of her arm braces, as if it was made of some kind of flexible steel, the material not penetrated. Lasha was exposed as a result, and the yellow-eyed woman took advantage of that, getting in close, and headbutting the guard commander with her own forehead that was much harder than it looked.

Despite her crested helm, the blonde woman staggered as her weapon hand wavered, and her foe was too quick in covering the new gap for the nearby Eliphas to aid her. She whirled both knives in her hands, and stabbed upwards, under the coverage of Lasha's breastplate and into her bottom ribs. The girl cried out and lost the grip of her weapon, blood coming forth immediately from the dual wounds in her lower sternum. The female entity withdrew her blades with that same, savage grin still on her face, and backhanded Lasha away, though, somehow, with immeasurable strength, as if she hadn't lost any of her power by shrinking down to the group's size.

The guard commander flew backwards, limbs crumpling forwards in a heap and sword pattering to the mud discarded, her body disappearing into the nearby treeline as a limb from a timber snapped along the way with her impact.

Elpihas shouted wordlessly. His most loyal and trusted friend was tossed aside as if some kind of undesirable fruit picked by accident. He swung a flurry of vengeful strikes, trying to find a weakness in the damned thing's defenses with each attack. The girl sidestepped or parried each swing, and none of them found purchase, though, with each assault, she seemed to give ground. The prince had seen it bleed when struck, and knew it was possible to injure it, though he was also sure he would tire much sooner than she did, and as he reflected grimly on that fact, he knew he was running out of time. The longer the fight dragged on, the more chance he had of losing, and most assuredly, dying.

Eliphas threw forwards a kick of his great armored boot and leg, trying to either push the woman off balance or knock her to the ground; neither of which occurred.

The horned girl punched his kick aside and lunged at him, swinging both daggers downwards as she went slightly airborne by some unknown means. The attack was meant for his face, but Eliphas turned his shoulder guard into the blows and one rebounded harmlessly off with a skidding shriek of scratching metal, the other, unfortunately, cut into a joint that met his left pectoral, going through the inner layer of his chainmail and drawing blood in a hot wash of pain.

The prince howled in rage in reply, but with his free left hand, he seized the girl by the throat and squeezed with every ounce of his strength, hoping to disable her long enough to strike with his axe, or failing that, crush her larynx with the new opening.

The girl showed minor discomfort, and at last, genuine struggle as she scrambled to loosen his grip, falling slightly short of his overall, superior reach. Thinking quickly in response though, she hammered a wrist into his own gauntlet and broke the choke hold, then, surprisingly, pressed her advantage and latched onto his own neck with terrifying power, squeezing his windpipe shut without any apparent trouble.

Eliphas gasped and his eyes forced shut, precious oxygen strangled from his lungs and a complete blockage of new air set in its place. He flailed and swung out haphazardly in mild panic and surprise, unable to breathe and now feeling his head begin to pound and his lungs starting to burn.

He gasped out again, his voice and coughs ragged and strained, and next, to his complete disbelief, he began to rise slowly. The girl, without displaying any effort, picked him up off the ground and held him up above her face, despite being shorter than him still.

Eliphas dropped his axe, not being strangled now taking all his effort, putting both hands to the task of freeing the single iron grip the dark-haired woman held onto his throat.

As he struggled, his legs dangling and his teeth clenched, the woman spoke to him, in his own native language.

“Heh, not so proud now are you little-lord?”

She said with a scoff.

Eliphas' face was turning red, but the pressure of the grip now wasn't growing, it was simply keeping him in place as he was inspected by the girl covered in unique leather.

“You were the best among them,” she brought him slightly closer to her face and lowered her voice,

“Tell me, what is your bloodline, human?”

Eliphas struggled and without voicing a response, spat half a mouthful of blood and saliva towards the girls face, who casually tilted her face out of its path.

The woman chuckled, turning his head from side to side and looking at his plate covered in names and deeds, none of which she recognized, though she discerned it was obviously to mark him out in some way as a leader or noble. His appearance, along with his skill at fighting, made him valuable.

She shrugged closing both of her eyes and her voice came again, her tone deep, but dismissive and oddly casual, completely at odds with the scene of utter devastation and violence around the pair.

“Fine, don't say anything. Have it your way. Maybe you'll tell me who you are after I tear one of your pretty eyes out.”

With that, the female entity tapped the very center of Eliphas' armor with her hand's dagger as his stomach suddenly and violently sank, the same rush of air and force of pressure reducing him now in size the moment her blade tapped the black steel.

The woman unzipped a pouch at her waist, carelessly plopping him inside and zipping it closed without a second thought. As she stepped in the cool mud with her bare soles, both stained with the remains of the freshly dead, she approached a nearby tree, and cut a hole in its bark, splitting the sides of the cut wide enough for her to step into and through, the cut in the wood sealing behind her like sliced flesh healing together over the span of just a few seconds.

And just as quickly as the chaos had ensued, the forest was still once more, and silent. No one had been spared, and even the birds that had taken flight would not return to the area until the next day at the earliest.

Her snores are absolutely without shame, louder than the most careless beast of burden Eliphas has ever had the misfortune to be around. The prince of Emoria, once the pride of the empire’s military forces, the subject of all manner of respect and awe in the eyes of his people, was now reduced to literally almost nothing, trapped and forced to suffer the indignity of not only defeat, but the humiliation of imprisonment. All the tests of courage and trials of hardship he’d been through could never have prepared him for how he felt in this very moment; insignificant.

The great training halls of his adolescence had beaten fighting spirit into his heart like the hammer upon heated iron, for years he had been broken, indoctrinated, and forged into a warrior built to endure in service to the empire, his empire. Now, he sat defeated, in far more ways than immediately obvious.

The girl inhaled again and the prince shut his eyes, angrily wishing that her incessant noise would cease, even for just a moment, his focus lost, his clear path to his future, gone. He just wanted a brief respite more than anything else from her complete and total display of uncaring slumber.

The woman lay on her simple wooden bedframe, the thing constructed out of bare wood, unshaped by a trained carpenter’s hand and lashed together with ties of leather or other scavenged materials. Her arms were above her head, careless and evenly sprawled, her legs, mostly uncovered by her outfit, similarly stretched out and lounging, her right knee bending its shin inwards.

Sleeping deeply, without a single concern for anything. The scene before Eliphas infuriated him.

She had taken joy in slaughtering his men, stolen him as her prize, and even now, held as much concern for his life as she would a mistreated pet. But worst of all, this beast had slain Lasha, and though his situation was hopeless at present, he swore to the war god no matter how long it took, whatever it would cost him, he would exact harsh vengeance upon her for that, without mercy, and without hesitation. He vowed to make her suffer.

She stirred slightly, her mouth open and a thin trail of saliva running out of and down the left side of her cheek, muttering something under her breath that Eliphas didn’t understand, as if she were in a dream.

He sighed with stifled anger and rising torment, she was so loud, probably due his size he imagined, now that he was the height of a small standing coin on the surface of her uneven table. The girl had placed him there when the pair had arrived back to her simple home, a cottage of sorts, not primitive though not exactly to a standard typical of Eliphas’ experience traveling his lands. He had been unconscious when he awoke here, why exactly, he was not certain. He remembered dropping from her enormous fingers into her zipped pocket after the short battle, feeling the wall of flesh that was her thigh slam against him as he met the bottom of the pouch material. That must have been it then. The exertion of combat and the thump to his head must have done it. But it didn't matter.

When he had woken up, she was already fast asleep, and remained that way still, snoring like a thundering waterfall with each of her shallow breaths. She was, by comparison, massive, even larger than when she had attacked the company on the trail back to the capitol. Eliphas had taken stock of his surroundings, a few walls, a single small, open-air window with no glass but a wooden shutter, as well as other less important observations about her dwelling. Most importantly, was the door, which seemed like miles away, and just the table itself, as the prince had panicked initially trying to find a way to escape as he came to, was high like a mountain ledge from the cold embrace of the floor, a height he knew he could not survive a fall from.

He continued with his task, trying to distract himself as the snoring echoed without pause, not letting up as it had been going on for the last few hours.

Eliphas had a knife in his hand, the short single-edged blade about as long as two index fingers were together, the straight, angle-tip razor sharp and gleaming. The woman had failed to search him before his capture, and as result, he retained his concealed weapon in his boot sheath, as well as a small pouch of silver and bronze coins under his right skirt plate.

 The prince had a piece of his duty tunic cut and bundled in his mouth, trying to keep his voice muffled for what was to come, his left arm bare of his plated armor and pulled out from the protection of his mail shirt, his strong, young shoulder and bicep muscles bulged with regimented strength building and constant exposure to war. His skin bore scars here and there, some minuscule, others like the one nearest to his shoulder bone, deep, ragged, and wide. The shoulder one was where a Scardonic gator had tried to have a bite of him a few years back, but the beast wasn’t quite as quick as Eliphas had been, the oversized reptile missing its bite, though its front claw had slashed through his armor, digging into his flesh. The man remembered the pain and his cry of agony, one of his warriors had pulled him away and saved his life, the rest of his battle-guard killing the raging animal shortly there-after.

That warrior had been Braum.

Eliphas took a deep breath and swallowed, he knew what he had to do, he had been planning this ritual since he'd determined escape from the table was impossible. Such was the way of his people, of his family tradition, the longer he went without honoring this grim custom, the more shame he felt with each passing moment.

Carefully, trying to brace for the pain and keep the line straight, he pressed the honed, biting side of the knife to his skin. He grunted in pain as the blade cut into his meat, blood running freely as he gasped out and groaned, his slightly trembling hand slowly making its way down and around to the softer muscle of his arm.

“What are you doing?” A voice came like the concussive shot of a powder weapon.

Eliphas stopped at once, though he knew who the question had come from without glancing up. He wasn’t afraid, for whatever reason, and his reply seemed to reflect that as he spat out the rolled bit of fabric in between his teeth.

“Mind your business, mongrel.”

The girl rose up, not coming back with words initially, as the bed she lay upon creaked and contorted beneath her weight. She stood to her feet, the soles of which boomed out lowly as they landed, doing so similarly with each step she took bringing herself to the side of the table.

She looked down at him with indifference, as if she wasn’t concerned for her new found property’s well-being or the fact he was mutilating himself. A few noiseless moments passed, as she beholds him with completive curiosity. When Eliphas concluded she was not going to intervene, he turned his gaze back down to his arm and replaced the small bundled gag in his mouth, intent on finishing his grizzly task.

The horned woman watched him without moving, her eyes narrowing and observing closely with an inquisitive nature, as he continued to strain in pain, her eyes keeping track of the small blade he pressed into and drew along his skin, carving a line of blood around his bicep.

“If you’re trying to kill yourself, you should probably go at something more important. Don’t you think?” She said without a hint of humor or sarcasm, dead flat and serious. Her voice was a few tones lower than a girl ought to have, but there was a decently pleasant quality to it, as if the pitch reflected power or drive, and not dainty femininity.

Eliphas inhaled shutting his eyes distractedly halting a second, then sighed and shook his head, thinking of responding, but deciding ultimately to remain quiet, following the trace of the weapon neatly again as it neared his first point of contact, a nearly complete, unbroken line carved into his bleeding skin upon the circumference of his arm.

The girl concluded it was nothing to be worried about, although it was a curious development. She knew little of this man, and nothing of the place she had visited during the ambush, and her mind was teased with answers she had yet to pose questions about. Who really was this stranger?

She turned away, pushing the thoughts from her mind, heading to a small area in her home that seemed to be for preparing food or meals, baskets of fruit hanging and covered boxes here and there in no orderly fashion. She poured water into a simple bowl and grabbed a large piece of scrap fabric, gathering something for the man to clean his wounds with, though not intending the gesture to be one out of kindness, merely necessity. The woman knew she’d injured him during the span of their duel, and understood that split in his body needed washing if he was to survive to see her intended purpose for him.

She walked back, and as his small form focused into her vision again, she saw him wiping away crimson from his grim handiwork, red still running out of the straight gash all the way around his left arm. She placed the bowl and rag down next to him nearby and his head jerked up and over to the sound of the heavy thud.

She stood there, quiet and resting her hand on her hip, leaning to one side as she examined him without speaking. Eliphas looked back up at her, not sure of how this latest confrontation would play out, her sharp yellow eyes somehow frigid with the unmistakable disregard for life. She could kill him, right now, in more than a thousand graphic ways he did not want to consider.

“I’m Daedra,” she began with no amount of formality, “I cast a spell on your body. It shrinks you, obviously, whenever I touch you a certain way or,” she pauses, bringing her right hand up and next to her head, keeping her savage eyes placed upon his body as she snapped her index finger and thumb together, the digits clicking out an audible noise.

Eliphas found himself suddenly sick and tumbling off the table with a loud crash, full and normal sized as the ground rushed to meet his face and chest, his removed armor plates from his arm and shoulder remaining on the table, resized with him where they had been relatively left when he'd been smaller.

The prince realized in an instant he still clutched his knife, and as his mind focused, recovering from the strange after-effects of the odd magic, he whirled the next moment, a roar coming from his throat as he lunged for Daedra, intent on slicing open her neck and feeling her blood on his hands again.

But before her prisoner could even rise completely and take a single step, however, she snapped again, entirely unconcerned at his impulsive response and shrinking him in an identical drop of time back to his tiny stature, the size she more preferred him at.

Eliphas staggered and almost fell back over again, shaking his head in disbelief as the whole room had burst and grown back before he’d even understood what was happening. Worryingly he found, the girl now stood before him, without having moved an inch and his own form shrunk and on the floor beneath her threatening gaze.

Weapon still in hand, he gawked up at her, his mind not comprehending what his eyes were trying desperately to tell it, that he was again as an insect would be before her once more.

Daedra took a step, stretching beyond what seemed like a mile and dropping her right foot before the insignificant man in front of her toes. She could see him clearly enough, but she was acting to dissuade him from doing anything else that might earn her displeasure from here on out.

She brought her other foot rushing over and placed it nearby the first, the ground shaking and rattling Eliphas’s bones as it met the improvised floor. Her entire body was vast, seeming to go on forever, all the way up to those menacing eyes that now held him in place with the promise of death should they wish it upon him.

He took an involuntary step back, his inner reason pushed just as he was beyond its limits as she spoke down to him, raising an eyebrow and smirking in his direction.

“If you don’t do as I say, my little lord, I will kill you. Make no mistake of that.”

The small man gulped as a bead of sweat rolled down the right half of his forehead, his breath rushing higher, anxiety welling up in him and his nerves resisting a cry to flee.

“I killed your servants, because they were in the way. But you…”

She pauses and lifts the toes of one of her feet from the ground and places her biggest before his body as he slightly recoils, her largest a head or two still taller than he was.

“I’ll have a great deal of fun with you before I allow death to take you from me…Do you understand?”

Eliphas hesitated and didn’t answer, still partially afraid, and the rest of his mind not keeping up with these ceaseless, outlandish events and displaying his obvious discomfort.

Daedra smiled down at him as she brought her big toe up above him, then casually bumping it into his torso with careful delicacy. By contrast, her captive was shoved mercilessly to the ground, his armor unable to protect his vital organs against such an incalculable amount of power, fire in his chest burning and his lungs forced empty as he thudded to the floor.

He was on his back and gasping, as the boulder of flesh then pinned him to the ground resting on his body, his head just barely coming out from beneath its embrace and able to see passed its nail, up to the grinning teeth of the inhuman woman, both her hands coming to rest on her hips. Eliphas had both his hands attempting to hold the creature’s weight at bay, from his perspective that made him feel like it was helping, but in reality, Daedra applied no more force now than she did when totally relaxed.

“I said,” She began to repeat, “Do you understand?”

“Yes!” shouted the man beneath her toe, gasping and teeth clenched tight, straining hopelessly against the pressure’s unimaginable force.

“I don’t think I heard you, little lord, what was that?” Daedra replied, the previous time with a serious, low tone, this time with a humorous taunt, placing one cupped hand to her left ear as she bent over slightly, turning her head still wearing her smile. She carefully pressed down her smooth, largest toe, increasing the agony by a fraction to the pinned boy far below her excited eyes.

“Yes!” Eliphas forced from his lungs as his face turned bright red, stammering out a pained gasp as he finished his reply, his armor was starting to groan and creak, and if this playfully tormenting didn’t stop soon, it would buckle and become his new casket.

Then at once, the pressure ceased, the girl removing her foot and placing it again a distance away with a thunderous boom, saying out happily at a normal speaking voice as she did so.

“Good! Then we understand each other!”

Eliphas gasped and coughed, rolling partially to one side as his lungs took in saps of precious air. Daedra watched him writhe for a moment, enjoying herself immensely; this newest catch of hers was proving to be quite unique. She told him as much, though knowing full well she’d soon be done with him. Strangely, she wasn’t excited for that time to arrive, not like the few others before at least. The girl decided, setting herself down to her knees to the surprise of her small prize, that she would get some proper entertainment out of this one before she turned him over for payment.

She knelt down in front of Eliphas, her face filling the sky, and her eyes, like a pair of murderous stars, making his dark plate slightly glow with them nearing.

Daedra whispered down to him, her grin never ceasing and her breath, warm on the exposed parts of his skin.

“I think you and I will get along, juuussst fiiine…”

She held his body and especially his eyes, within the huge iris’ of her own matching pair, thinking to herself of wonderous fun to come in the next few days. A thought, however, arriving within her mind as she completely forgot a key question to pose.

“Oh right, I almost forgot, what’s your name, my little lord?”

Eliphas blanched slightly at being referred to as belonging to someone else, stammering a half moment before the towering woman spoke out again.

“It’s alright…I don’t bite…” she said whispering the last bit, her tongue pushing out and testing the sharp edge of one of her slightly elongated canine teeth.

The Emorian took a breath, and then replied, his composure returned now and feeling brave again.

“Eliphas. Lord of Emoria, the empire of man.”

“Eliphas…” she said testing the word as it came from her lips, “Eliphas…” she whispered again, this time adding, “Of what house? Do you have a more specific bloodline?”

“No,” he said lying, “I am a general of the Emorian military, the men in my company were my personal guard.”

“Why is it that you wear black, then?” She came again without pause, her head tilting a bit away, eyelids fractionally lowering as if in contemplation of his answer to her inquiry.

“It is to mark me out among my fellows. A symbol of rank, more than anything else.” That part was the truth, and though he had just lied about his own true lineage, he found he had done so because he was not sure how damning it would be to reveal that type of information just yet.

“Hmm…” The girl commented with a raise of her eyebrow.

“Well,” her voice came as she closed her eyes, shaking her horned head, and suddenly rising back to her feet making to turn away, as if at once incredibly bored, “You’re in my company now, so don’t try anything stupid anymore.”

She snapped her fingers again as he flashed back to his normal size in the span of time it takes to complete a single breath. He shuddered slightly as his head spun in a stab of pain, the spell seeming to be the source of the mild dizziness that bombarded him.

“Clean off the wound on your chest. Oh, and that latest stupid choice of yours on your arm, I don’t want you dying before I manage to sell you.”

“S-sell me?” Eliphas blurted, looking up and rising to his feet.

Daedra turned and looked back and forth as if looking for some obvious alternative he appeared to suggest.

“Yeah, why else would I have kept you alive? I’m going to sell you, and hopefully, make enough to eat for a month or two. Now clean yourself up.”

The prince blinked in utter disbelief, and shook himself rigid, reaching down and taking the bowl of offered water and rag as if confused, but knowing he should tend to his mess of a chest and still bleeding arm, before he contracted anything truly serious.

He looked at Daedra as she rummaged around a box and then tossed him a small brown bag. When Eliphas reached out and caught it, the material half opened and revealed a red, wet, sand-like substance. He peered down at it and flexed his fingers, trying to test its odd, unfamiliar consistency.

“Lacos,” Daedra said turning away again, “put it on your chest and it’ll seal it without having to bandage you up.”

The prince had finished looking at the powder, and now, without realizing it, glared over silently to the girl as she looked around for another box, his lack of moving though, attracting her attention, her instincts feeling his eyes on her from behind. He kept trying to convince himself to try and kill her again and again, he just couldn’t seem to wrestle with the fact that she could annihilate his life with such ease, as well as shackle him so completely without any physical bonds. She aided him in changing his mind though with the next words she spoke, meeting his eyes, not backing down from his hatred on clear display.

“If you don’t do what I say, I’m going to bite off one of your arms, you snot-nosed little shit.” She paused and emphasized the last words she growled out to him.

“My patience has limits...Eliphas…”

She said his name again, and he had not yet gained control of his breath, which became somehow more difficult with her speaking it. “It’s suicide to conceive trying to attack her again,” his mind was screaming to him. He wanted to ignore it, he wanted to place his faith in his abilities, and his skills in fighting, but he knew in his heart he could not kill her in the time it would take for her to snap her little fingers.

And he rather liked his arms, he had to admit.

He sighed heavily and looked away, back to where his remaining plates of armor sat idle. He stepped over and kept his eyes on Daedra as she watched him scoop them up and head for the door, her face betraying no emotion as she made certain he was going to cooperate.

“Where are you going?” She said as he turned and faced away, halting as he heard her speak.

“To do as you wish, in what privacy I can steal from you, filth.”

Daedra finally smiled again, rolling her eyes and turning away herself as her prisoner ducked and went through the only door to her home, calling out as he let the light of the midday sun flow inside.

“If I step outside and don’t see you, I’ll snap my fingers. The spell works no matter where you may plan to run, no matter how far away you could ever hope to get.”

Eliphas stopped dead again, surprise on his face, and a small consideration he’d been having shattered. Daedra turned and glanced over her shoulder smiling at him as he looked over back at her.

“…Let me know if you need any help, tin-man…” She muttered out sensually adjusting her standing posture ever-so-slightly to accentuate her physique.

The prince of Emoria frowned and bared his teeth at her for trying to play games with him, while simultaneously threatening his life. He hawked his throat and brought up a bit of phlegm, a clear insult in any culture as he spat it onto Daedra’s floor, defiance, no matter how much the girl had tried to subdue it, still burning in his soul.

The horned girl allowed this gesture to pass as he finally made his way out of the cottage, slamming the door behind him, the woman with almost jet black hair turning to gather some supplies for the coming journey the two would soon be going on.

“So proud. So full of fire…” She whispered to herself.

“And feisty too…”

“Fair weather, not a bad change to the last two years of either frigid cold or unceasing rain,” thought Eliphas to himself as he trudged on behind Daedra, the girl before him wearing the only clothes she probably owned. Black bands ran around her triceps and biceps, her half-covered upper thighs along with a groin piece concealed more of her well-sculpted frame as she moved with subtle, confident grace. Her clothing was sparse, especially around her chest where her gifts were not considerably small, and the single band that concealed only their midriff revealed much of her body. She wore partial gloves and full arm bracers, Eliphas had seen the material of all these pieces deflect steel despite its clearly light consistency. His own plate, in contrast, clunked and scraped over his entire body and against his inner mail, the sounds of the metal as it carried his movements becoming over time as natural to his being as breathing, though it seemed to be more of an annoyance to his current company, but she’d stopped complaining about it after a while realizing there was nothing she could do to silence it.


This, however, did not stop her from using it to poke fun at her noble in tow.


“Do all of you wear such obnoxious armor where you’re from?” She said closing her eyes and frowning without glancing to address him, the constant droning, scraping, disturbing her focus.


“Yes. And maybe to you it's obnoxious, but it’s saved my life more times than I can count.”


He remembers how he had been greatly bothered by Daedra’s earlier snoring, and he used that to stab back at her now that noise was the current complaint.


“And I much prefer the noise it makes to the racket you produce while you sleep.”


Daedra chuckled low and murmured over her shoulder, ignoring his small retort,

“Stupid humans. It’s not worth what you get in return. Lot of good that stuff did for your little warriors when they needed it most…”


Eliphas scowled with the menace of an angry viper, his brave guardians’ memories being so casually tossed around as a playful insult. The two met eyes briefly and the woman caught sight of her captive’s upper lip curl and tremble with rising fury. He really did hate her, with or without her constant prodding with ill-tipped words, though for now at least this mattered little to her.


“You’re loud, and you move slowly,” she continued, the barb of her last statement embedding itself, its purpose fulfilled, “And it was foolish of you to try and fight me in the mud where you couldn’t move as well. Even at your own tiny size, it wasn’t difficult to beat you.”


“You ambushed us,” Eliphas said with a low voice like a barely constrained wolf, eager to attack a pack competitor, “the only way to endure a surprise attack is to fight your way out of it, though I suppose you wouldn’t know anything of tactics or proper warfare, mongrel.”


He grins to himself as he narrows eyes in Daedra’s direction, taking a brief bit of sweet satisfaction, remembering the savage cracking sound his fist had made when it had hammered into the side of her skull.


“How’s your head by the way?”


The woman scoffed and smiled slightly as well at his tiny prick of a victory he reminded her of, remembering the surprise she had felt when his blow had landed, actually hurting when it met her skin and making her dizzy.


“It aches a little, but not much. And who says I know nothing of war,” Daedra said with a look of true surprise, as if she had made things obvious in her perspective on the topic, “I seemed to do just fine against your, “tactics and proper warfare,” she replied with a mocking tone, gesturing about with her hands on the last few words.


The prince frowned upon hearing her retort, knowing she was in this case actually correct. Despite the clearly unequal forces, she had minimalized harm to herself with her assault, cut off their escape, and had annihilated her enemy in less than a couple of minutes, even managing to escape and bring him to this strange forest he was not familiar with without being pursued.


That was indeed, he thought, a sudden point of interest. He had yet to pose a particular question about their location, and as such, now that she seemed talkative again, he endeavored to learn of it by at last bringing it up.


“What is this land that breeds such shadow warriors, anyways? This is no set of woods I know, and I have been to most in the realm,” the black lord said casting his gaze to the unfamiliar trees and thick vegetation, the woods were shorter but thicker and far denser around the bases than his native homeland. They seemed somewhat, and somehow, more healthy by comparison.


The two were still walking, where their destination lie was something of a small secret to Daedra, and as such, she had not told him where they were headed, but she saw no harm in telling him about where they were currently. She, in fact, found the thought suddenly delicious, for a reason that would soon reveal itself.


“This is Almaahni, forest of the far east.” She began without rebuttal or arguing, to Eliphas’ surprise.


“This is the wilderness, not a land belonging to any one people or race.”


“Where is it in relation to where you took me?”


That was the important question, the answer, hopefully, telling the captive noble how to get back to his coveted civilized empire in the planning of his escape, even if he was skeptical she’d actually tell him. Daedra again caught him off guard, offering the answer without as much as a tease or taunt.


“We’re around maybe sixteen…seventeen thousand leagues from where I beat you in single combat,” She said with a smile, though not for the small joke at the end of her statement, but for what she knew would come next.


Eliphas halted at once boots grinding against the gravel and dirt, his eyes wide and his mouth coming slightly open, the girl stopping as well when she heard him cease moving, looking back to behold him with her full set of teeth on show in a devilish smirk.


“Se-seventeen thousand leagues?!” The prince blurted in shock, trying to comprehend the words she’d just uttered. “The empire is only fourteen hundred from edge to edge, that’s impossible! T-there's no way!”


Daedra rolled her eyes and raised a hand, pointing a finger off to the west, smirking with that venomous look she loved to sport,


“Yes, it's possible. Home for you is that way, if you’d like to start walking.”


She turned and laughed aloud, starting to walk again, knowing full well something as ludicrous as that would never happen, and even if it did, she’d shrink him in a heartbeat and seal him away in her leg pouch again, ending the matter once and for all.


Eliphas snapped out of his momentary shock and jogged to catch up, continuing his questions eagerly now, greatly interested to have her participation in the conversation.


“How was this done? What did you do?!”


“It’s a spell common to my people, we can travel reliably short distances through trees that are large enough, though you should be happy for me,” she said turning to look at him, clearly proud of herself, holding up one extended index finger just before she kept on, “of my kind I’m the most skilled in the technique!”


“Wait,” Eliphas came next, “you said short distances.”


Daedra next waved the same hand dismissively at the warrior walking to her right side.


“I also said I was the most skilled at the spell. Though I have to admit, the farther the distance, the more strange the outcome tends to be. Even for me.”


The prince raised an eyebrow at the last piece of curious information.


“Strange?” he said, the question obvious enough.


Daedra continued, “Sometimes I’ll leave for a few hours and arrive home days or weeks later. Other times I’ll end up a few miles from where I left, and in some cases, I can’t even go back to where I’ve been.”


This last part deeply concerned Eliphas, from what the girl was saying, though without knowing the extent of her experience, or even if she was telling the truth, she seemed to suggest she could not return him home regardless of whether or not she wanted to do so.


Her next few words confirmed his rising apprehension.


“And I definitely can’t take you back to your home either, it was way too far in the first place. I only went there because it’s too dangerous to go anywhere else right now.” She grinned up and over to him, happy to crush his hopes of seeing his lands again with cold certainty, “so you’re stuck with me.”


Eliphas took to silence; he knew in his subconscious, somehow, that she wasn’t lying. As such, he was trapped then, incomprehensibly far from Emoria, and about to be sold as a slave to some horror of a new life. It was a dark, uncertain prospect, but with vicious calm, in as little as a heartbeat, he reminded himself he would accept it to be away from this devil-girl.


There was no possible means of escape now, not with her outlandish magic cast upon him, but perhaps later…when he was with a less experienced captor…


“Why did you cut the line around your arm?” Daedra came after a short pause, changing the subject.


Her eyes narrowed and she smirked deviously, “So tired of my company already that you’d kill yourself like a true warrior and end it?”


This woman was becoming too much. She intended to not only insult him personally, but in the same breadth of time, further glorify herself. Daedra really was unbearable to be around and it felt like the prince’s blood was constantly set to a violent boil whenever she spoke.


Eliphas bared his teeth and clenched a fist of armored knuckles, the same one that had broken the skin of her skull not long ago. Though the thought of capture and ransom was one of extreme dishonor, especially to his own people, there were other things he was guilty of that unfortunately far outweighed that newest of sins.


“You wouldn’t understand,” he said frowning and turning away, his anger cresting but barely under his control in that moment.


“And why wouldn’t I?”


She replied curtly, stepping over a puddle of shallow water as the two kept on, “you know nothing about me.”


“And I don’t care to either, filth,” Eliphas growled out, not even looking in her direction. Over the course of his capture, more and more the prince felt his vulgarity and spite rise, he became as time went on, less and less refined, and he more frequently chose to allow his emotions guide his behavior, letting slip, as in this case, anger and a lapse in discipline. This was something he had always been taught to remain conscious of, to resist. And though Daedra chuckled and broached no further questions, appearing to grow tired of poking at his noble, personal visage, even apparently finding humor in his momentary loss of control, he knew he was better than this.


He had been taught since he was as a child, that one must never forget who they are. His people were a proud kind, and that fact gave him new focus.
He allowed a bit of time to pass before he reluctantly kept on.


“It is a practice among my kind…”

Eliphas began lowly, looking straight on as the two walked side by side, Daedra flicking her eyes up and raising her brow, surprised to hear him still on the topic.


“Nobles of Emoria are a part of a warrior caste. We and we alone are burdened with the leadership of his majesty’s armies. Together, we all make up the legions of our great military, each fiefdom of the nation contributing its own men to fight for the empire.”


Daedra cut in, compelled to speak on the matter, as always unable to avoid the prospect of a potential insult.


She scoffed first, “Huh, so much for your warrior caste then,” she said shrugging her mostly uncovered arms, clearly referencing how she’d stepped on and devoured some of the best fighters his country could produce.


Eliphas rolled his eyes and tried to ignore her as he went further, intent on answering her question, the reminder of his previous life comforting in a way, never mind how dark the present subject was.


“All those of noble blood and seven years of age are sent to the great Barracks of Helmar until the age of seventeen. They undergo training and suffer brutally at the hands of the battle-hardened veterans.” He trails off, the memory of that horrible place surfacing vividly for an instant as his eyes see a flurry of past hardships, death, blood…and worse.


“Many do not survive.”


Daedra is quiet now, somewhat intrigued by this interesting new perspective on the social practices of others in distant places. She asks, however, the question that originally brought the conversation up.


“And the circle? What’s it for?”


“It is a ritual of my bloodline… Some say it has carried on since the beginning of the empire…” he pauses, nervous about what he’s finally going to admit aloud for the first time. He murmurs out the next reply, barely audible regret in his voice as it creeps out. He dreads the fact, but it is the truth of his fate, and he would not further dishonor himself by trying to hide from it.


The man inhales and then says with his eyes coming closed, bracing himself, knowing how the girl will probably react, but intending with all of his willpower not to lie.


“It symbolizes defeat in battle...”


The inhuman girl suddenly erupts in laughter, her lips bursting open as her breath rushes out of her mouth, her hands falling to her stomach as she tilts her head back in cries of glee. Eliphas feels his brow twitch and his nostrils flare, anger again rising in him as he resists its new hot embrace. He expected this kind of response, even tried to prepare himself for it, but the overwhelming sense of mocking amusement at his expense created a sharp tug at his discipline, which was starting to erode at an alarming rate it because of it.


Daedra, of course, continued to make things worse.


“You cut your arm because you got beat by a girl?!” She tilted forwards now, her breaths erratic, almost laughing between each and every word she managed to get out.


“You must have dozens, no, HUNDREDS of marks then!”


Eliphas finally snapped pushed to the edge of his restraint. The Emorian lord swung out with his left arm, shoving the girl around as he turned to face her as well, the pair coming to a sudden halt. The prince roared back at her, his voice raised and his gathered knuckles formed into a fist, held out before his chest.


“It doesn’t matter if I was beaten by a starving child or the war god himself you stupid mongrel!”


Daedra had her eyes closed as she covered her mouth with one hand, as if to give the impression she was trying to control herself, though truthfully she wasn’t.


 “It is an ancient and sacred tradition carried by all who have come before me; the only thing your ancestors have apparently accomplished is the inconceivable task of fucking a herd of sheep!”


The horned girl burst out louder with renewed energy, laughing more with a new wave of enthusiasm, with noticeably more vigor, Eliphas made out a few words as she wiped at one of her eyes, looking as if she was shedding small tears.


“A flock!” She laughed out, her slightly larger than normal canine teeth gleaming.


The prince felt his anger melt away suddenly, due to his on setting confusion, not understanding her angle.


“What?” He said, also coming down from his emotional outburst.


“A group of sheep, you idiot,” she began once more, “a group of sheep is called a flock, not a herd. And you call me stupid.” She began to laugh more as her prisoner felt his brow twitch a second time and his right temple throb with frustration, resisting the urge to split her open with the nearest sharp object.


+ + + +


The moon was full, and larger than Eliphas was used to, looking up momentarily from his lap, his long, single-edged battle knife in one hand, and the smoothest, flattest stone he could find in the other. A small fire crackled and a piece of wood broke as the prince returned to his task, his brief distraction at the beautiful night over with. It was cool out, but not cold, and the air was crisp, the sky above, full of bright stars and celestial bodies.


Daedra sat across from the armored man as he ran one side of his weapon in circles along the wet stone, scraping it to a fine edge as he toiled in silence to himself. She sat against a tree, back pushed on the bark and feet propped up on one of the logs they had set aside for fuel to be fed to the fire, her soles bare and dirty from the days’ traveling.


“Why do you insist on doing that? You've been at it a half hour, give it a rest.” The girl called over to him as he didn’t look up and continued.


“It needs to be sharp,” he said in an annoyed voice before looking up and meeting her eyes, speaking in a more normal tone after doing so, “in case I have to stab someone.”


Daedra smiled and brought one of her hands down, the both of them having been behind her head a moment ago as she relaxed. She placed one palm over her the center of her chest, and said with the type of voice that suggested mocking a wounded heart.


“Stab someone, you don’t mean me, do you? After we had so much fun today?”


Eliphas smiled at that, bringing the blade up to the light of the fire and turning it over a few times, examining his work thus far.
“Eh, well, the thought had crossed my mind. But no. I said “someone,” not you.”


The girl narrowed her eyes and then closed them, replacing her hands behind her head and tilting back with a sigh.


“Good, I’d hate for you to make such a mistake, I might feel bad after killing you for trying.”


“I don’t kill people in their sleep, that would grant me dishonor equal to practically what you have earned thus far. Though I would encourage you to rest,” he pauses before finishing with, “it would finally give me some quiet time away from you.”


“Rest? You mean actually sleep, with you over there, and making all that noise?” She said opening her shining, yellow eyes as the fire played dances of brilliant color over their vibrant surfaces.


“You really think I’d trust some strange man to stay awake near me while I’m lying defenseless? You have to be kidding.”


This, for a reason he really wanted to ignore, gathered Eliphas’ attention as he stopped working his knife back and forth. He looked up and ruffled his brow, thinking to himself his thoughts must be incorrect about assuming a portion of Daedra’s meaning. He looked over to her, surprised by how her eyes made him feel for a heart beat’s span of time. He was nervous suddenly to continue, because he couldn’t wrap his head around what she may be insinuating.


“Wait. Did you just suggest that I… That I might-“


“Well of course,” she says plainly, as if she’s discovered some secret plot of his, “you are a male, and we are roughly about the same age, so there’s no way I’m sleeping without knowing you can’t try anything funny.”


Eliphas stammered and held a look between disgust and shock, despite a flare of red washing over both sides of his face.

“Y-you can’t be fucking serious?!”


“Hey, I know I’m pretty,” Daedra says with a shrug, “and don’t even try to deny you’ve taken looks at me since we met...I’ve seen you.”


The prince roared as his face went hard, despite its color betraying his inner emotions, the primary of which was of course though, not anger.


“Yes, I’ve looked at you, you egotistical idiot! Trying to imagine all the ways I’d like to kill you!”


“Ah ha!” Daedra says sitting up and pointing a finger at Eliphas as he shuddered with malice in his blood.


“I knew it! You have been sneaking looks at me!”


Eliphas stabbed his sharpened blade into the earth and sat up straight as the woman had a just before, leaning in her direction, matching her posture,


“Maybe if you didn’t prance around half naked everywhere you wouldn’t harbor such fears about people wanting to defile you!”


Eliphas blurted out with complete disbelief next, his appearance for restraint all but gone now in his eyes,


“The very notion that I would do such a thing, at all, with you no less is completely insane. You’re insane, Daedra. You tried to kill me, probably killed my best friend, and plan on selling me as if I were cabbage. What in all the realms is wrong with you?!”


“Hey,” she came back with a defensive tone, “I can probably get waaay more out of you than cabbage, I’ve only resorted to stealing that once.”


“You!-, “Eliphas began to reply and stopped himself, shaking his head and feeling as always, like he was trying to converse with a boulder. He held up both of his hands and closed his eyes, trying to calm himself, shaking his head a moment, trying to banish his rising fury.


“Look… No, ok? I had no intentions of doing what you suggest.” He stopped and looked over into her glowing gold irises, attempting to convey sincerity, “If you’d like, I can go to sleep first, but you have to take first watch.”


“Take watch? This isn’t a campaign, tin-boy. There’s nothing out here scarier than me, that’s for sure.”


“Fine, fine, then just go to sleep after me, ok?” he managed while shaking his head again, just trying now to bring an end to the conversation, still in shock at seeing what small amount of respect she looked to have for him.


“Gods above…” he swore, exhausted with frustration, rubbing his face with both hands.


Eliphas took back up his knife and slid it with a scrape into his boot sheath, overwhelmed, as he had never been before, and in such a short conversation.


Daedra glanced away, looking to the fire, the wood cracking and glowing a red-orange color, not far from the shade of her eyes, the light of the small flames washing the both of them warm as Eliphas went silent again, laying to his back with a protracted groan, as if he’d been moving for a thousand years. He sighed heavily as his armored body leveled onto the dry ground.


The prince placed his hand on his chest and kept his other near the handle of his long knife, wanting to close his eyes but finding it hard to bring himself to do so. Both sides of his head had been shaven with consistent regularity over the last two years, but within the last days of marching before his capture, he felt stubble growing there as well as on his face.

The girl looked up from the fire, her newest catch lying perpendicular to how she stretched out against the tree, his eyes and face in clear view, still open, as if they knew not how to relax.


“I thought you were going to sleep? Wasn’t that what you had been on about this whole time?” She said with a taunting inflection.


“Sleep does not come easily to me.” He said back calmly, not partaking in her attempts to rile him up.


He glanced over, though he kept his head fixed in place where it lay on the grassless soil. She stared back at him, both of them not making a sound. It wasn’t clear why he turned his attention to her in this moment, but soon enough it was gone, the truth of the small emotion fleeting into nothing as quickly as it had come.


He looked away, not sure how to describe how her stare made him feel, though he was certain it was nothing of intimidation. She just looked, wrong…somehow…And in some other ways…


“Then maybe we should tire you out a little…” Daedra broke in next, without prompting.


Eliphas ruffled his brow, confused, as she stood and walked over to where he lay on his back, he resisted the urge to roll away or turn, and instead stayed where he was, though he looked off towards the trees as she neared him, standing over him, not unlike when she had almost destroyed his ribs beneath her largest toe.


“Look at me,” she said down to him, her voice a whisper.


“No,” the prince grumbled out, bitter resentment in his throat.


Daedra knelt down slowly, trying not to seem threatening and came to rest by his face, arms on her knees as she stayed on the fronts of her feet. She raised a finger and went to begin tracing it along the names and etchings of his armor, the golden words still glistening proudly in most places despite dirt and grime, but his hand came up quickly and grabbed her wrist, squeezing it a fraction before shoving her arm away.


The horned girl felt the left half of her lips rise the slightest bit, the tiniest of smiles coming forth as she thought silently to herself about him. He was so strung tight, so undoubtedly rigid that she felt as though she might not ever be able to break him, something of a fact that tantalized every fiber of her being.


Only one day more, she said to herself, then she’d have to be rid of him. They would never see each other again, and many, so very many of the questions she felt swirl around in her head would forever go, unanswered. This seemed to be what he desired most, but to her…


“Eliphas,” she whispered again with no amount of anger or menace, lowering her head a fraction, and using his given name, “look at me.”


He closed his eyes, at first, ordering his body to deny her the pleasure. For a reason he could not explain, however, and by no means of trickery or magic on the part of his strange companion, the prince swallowed hard and reluctantly turned his eyes to look into her own as his lids came open, his demeanor stern, as if merely obeying the command of a senior officer, beneath it all though, he was... nervous..


Daedra moved to take the same finger that was going to touch his armor and placed it on his face, going as slowly and as calmly as she could manage, as if trying not to scare off a rare, prized horse that had slipped from its ties.


It didn’t work.


Eliphas pulled at the handle of his knife and nearly had it completely out of the weapon ring when Daedra snapped her fingers, a thump of air reducing him to the size of a date fruit again. He shook his head and made to get up to stand, but the girl was already upon him.


She placed a finger on his torso and brought herself to lay on her chest, her well-rounded breasts pressing against the ground, the tops of which we now proudly within view as she rested on her elbows. Daedra dangled her feet in the air behind her, moving the tips of her index and middle fingers to each arm of the tiny lord, pinning him on the dirt, spread out and at her mercy.


She held his hands down at the wrists as he did not resist in a typical manner, simply instead, back to refusing to look at her. Daedra took her free hand’s index finger and placed it softly onto the right side of Eliphas’ face as he shuddered in response to her touch, still wanting nothing to do with his captor. Gently, with the precision of a jewelry smith, she pushed his head to face her's as his eyes found hers once more, this time, unable to hide from their curiosity.


She stared at him for what seemed like ages, Eliphas of course not making a sound now that he was shrunken and completely vulnerable. Her eyes narrowed, as if catching a glimpse of something, like the brief instant when a person lies and you see the truth of their flawed deception.


“Who are you?…” She said with a low whisper, to herself, more than anything else.


+ + + +


“It’s a little farther over,” Daedra said frowning and rolling her eyes.


“Where? To the left or to the- Oh never mind, I’ve found it.”


It was about a half hour later, and the two had taken to not speaking for a while after the conversation, stirring something up in the inhuman girl, a feeling she was not sure was one she was concerned about or not.


Daedra had put Eliphas to work with a couple of tasks, he wasn’t going to sleep, so she decided to put him to good use, of course he himself only obliging begrudgingly due to the promise of losing a limb or his life if he did not comply. She first had him take out an ingrown hair on the back of her neck, and that was something she’d particularly felt extremely grateful to him for accomplishing, though she’d never in a dozen lifetimes admit that to him. That had proven a great relief, and as such, she utilized his small stature more to help her with other forms of personal care that came to mind.


At current, he had just located a splinter of wood that had been bothering her all morning, probably a shard from her home’s floor that buried its way into her sole earlier before they had left.


Daedra was lying on her chest, sprawled out and flat as she rested her face on her right forearm, her left arm discarded to the side of her torso. Eliphas was far down at her foot, walking around, mildly tickling her skin, looking for the splinter as she felt tiny taps of his body on her soft, twitching sole.


The Emorian knelt down to the stake of wood, examining it as the skin around the nuisance seemed to already be trying to cover the shard. Every now and again, the warm surface beneath him would undulate, or move, reminding him with an anxious conscience that he was standing on a living being, and not the reassuring, cold earth.


“It’ll need to be dislodged; I’ll have to cut you.” He said out to her, his voice, for reasons explained by the horned woman, carrying at this size as easily as it would as his normal stature. Something he found quite handy, but he knew would probably get him into trouble eventually with a muttered complaint or insult.

“Well go ahead then, and hurry up bug, I’m falling asleep over here…”


Eliphas shook his head as he glanced up and over to where the voice of her response had come, frowning and bitter at being insulted and ordered around like a common serf, now tending to this girls body like he was a mouse.


With care he pulled free his knife and started to cut a tear in Daedra’s skin, no blood rising out as he kept the piercing tactfully shallow, trying not to cause her discomfort. He didn’t care if she actually felt pain, but what he did care about was the fact he was on her foot, and in no way fast enough to get clear or her body in case of an accident, or if she chose to exact her anger on him for going too deep.


Soon enough though, Eliphas wrenched the stick out. It wasn’t small, not by any means, and as he examined its tip, he nodded and raised an eyebrow, impressed by the things that were at a time, so small in the world before.


“You know this reminds me of a story I heard as a child,” the prince began.


The girl rolled her eyes and closed them, talking with her cheek smooshed against her arm bracer,


“Yeah? That’s great…” She said uncaring, too tired to indulge him now at this point.


“It’s about a lion and a mouse. It involves a splinter, like this.” He said, brandishing the stake, then tossing it away and climbing down from Daedra’s massive sole, jumping and landing with a thud on his feet, steel plates and iron rattling with the drop.


The girl's eyes came open sharply as she furrowed her brow, recognizing the meaning in his words, surprised that she did, actually, understand his reference.


“Is that the one where the mouse takes the splinter out of the lion’s foot after he promises to repay a debt?” She says, suddenly understanding.


“Yes, that’s the one!” Eliphas says with what passes for a smile, a small spark of glee coming out as he shares for the first time, some type of commonality with his captor.


Daedra rises and rolls over, careful not crush Eliphas as he stands nearby.


She lays on her back now, head up against the base of a tree as she plucks her small prize from the ground and brings him to her face her eyes sharply bringing him into focus.


“It’s a dumb story, little-lord.” She says with a tired frown, holding him in between her index and middle finger as he rests his arms on them.


“Why would you say that, especially now?” he comes back with, and rightly so.


Daedra leans him in closer and bares her fangs at him as she narrows her eyes and whispers, tired but about to enjoy the metaphor at her disposal, all the while successful in making Eliphas’ skin suddenly crawl, his earlier, brief moment of enjoyment evaporating upon hearing her words.


“Because neither of them can actually talk, which means in reality, the lion would have eaten the mouse.”

Daedra walked slightly ahead of the prince, the two briefly taking a break from spiteful conversation and razor-edged insults, both it would appear, at last tiring of the seemingly incessant need to spew anger at one another. The walking was easy thankfully though, this earth here was good, and, despite it was not a place he particularly desired to be, he knew he had to admit his fate could have brought him to much worse lands.

Hefting the white-horned girl’s bag of traveling items on his back, the leather strap across his chest plate, just barely fitting around his armored torso, Eliphas took more of a look at this land the woman had brought him to. It was not unlike his home. The trees were healthy and though they weren’t extremely tall, they were dense and many-limbed. The air was warm, and he felt as though the current season was summer or something similar, light brown soil painted the forest floor as it did in the eastern portions of Emoria, likely land that was as well suited for cultivating crops as it was for producing lush, natural born trees.

Eliphas wasn’t enjoying himself, not by a long shot, but he wasn’t particularly finding the journey agonizing. He wasn’t tired, at least not by a huge measure; the two had only been walking for a few hours since they broke camp. By comparison though, Daedra seemed to maintain the same uniform speed without the slightest divergence. She was a curious creature, her various unnatural abilities, as well as her appearance, pulled at the intellectual part of his mind. Eliphas had seen much of the rest of the world, or so he had thought anyway, and though it was dark, cruel, and harsh, he was at least curious about the many things he could learn from it.

Daedra, was at present, completely unique. He had never met anyone like her, though he could liken her stubborn, heedless attitude to some exotic beasts of burden. Her species specifically was something he was surprised he’d never heard of or seen something like, and as he trudged on in silence, the prince caught himself looking at her horns, curved up and behind her back-length hair that draped slightly too each side of her shoulders.

His interest in answers compelled him to speak after the relative quiet had gone for so long, unbroken,

“Hey she-devil, are there many more of your kind?”

Daedra didn’t slow her walk, though she flicked her head briefly towards where the question had come from, continuing to keep her eyes ahead forward as she replied, not hiding her contempt. She sighed inwardly, her inner conversations with herself, rustled.

“What?”

“Are there more of you, your people I mean? Is this realm populated by more beings such as yourself?”

The girl chuckled, scoffing with a smile at the thought of the prince’s small world being turned upside down and his attempts to still try and come to terms with it.

“Yes, there are more. Though there’s not nearly as many left as there used to be.” She said with cold dismissal, as if entirely uncaring, “most humans will encounter one of us in their lifetime, though very few with actual regularity. We tend not to hang around anywhere long.”

“You’re nomads then?” Eliphas deduced aloud, thinking himself on the right path.

Daedra did glance over her shoulder completely this time, for the moment seeing in Eliphas genuine curiosity, and not specifically an attempt to nag at her. This, for some reason, felt more injuring than insults or harrying.

“Not exactly,” she muttered after a pause. A few seconds passed in quiet, reserved silence, both parties letting the words of the woman’s last sentence sink in, albeit for vastly different reasons. Her mood had changed instantly at the memories of what exactly was being referenced, and she sought to distance herself from it as soon as possible.

“Now shut up, I’m trying to forget you’re here.”

Eliphas did as was commanded, though not because he was commanded, simply due to the fact his questions had been answered and he felt no reason to press the issue further. An interesting prospect, he reflected, he wondered if all her fellows were as gifted in the art of combat as she was and if they could worryingly change their physical forms just as drastically. That, coupled with Daedra’s resistance to harm, sent a shiver down the Emorian’s spine as he considered there were others like her.

Many creatures of the mortal realm were vicious and merciless, but none of them seemed to take as much pleasure or enjoyment in being so as Daedra had previously.

As the black knight marched, he glanced up from his thoughts, sending them away, and began to pull at the strap of the bag containing things for the journey, inside of which was the pair of bladders the two had separately been drinking water from, among other things like food for the journey.

“Are we near to water by any chance, or should I ration our supply?” He said without thinking, finding himself a little too comfortable with his captor.

Daedra tilted her head back in frustration and rolled her glowing yellow eyes, sagging her arms down, and slowing her pace gradually to a halt as she spoke, teeth grinding together,

“I said stop talking, could you just shut up for on-“

Just then, a thump came from the nearby trees, a whistling shriek accompanying the sudden noise taking both of the pair by surprise. A whizzing black dart flew through the warm, dead air, a dark slender shape smacked into Daedra’s back with a fleck of blood as it impacted with a wet smack. Eliphas recognized the whistling sound at once and as he got a clear look at the projectile now partially embedded in her back, he was already certain it was the sound of a crossbow. The girl tumbled forwards and into the prince’s chest plate, and he instinctively caught her as she cried out in pain, as if he meant to aid her. Just over her shoulder, however, Eliphas saw the source of the shot, as well as the two other men who came rushing at them from the woods, shouting and brandishing weapons as they sprinted out towards them.

The lord of Emoria coldly shoved the horned woman aside and to the ground, remembering again who he had suddenly felt concern for, now, completely uncaring of her injury or her safety and only concerned with meeting this new threat and putting his recent, boiling hate to good use.

She tumbled to the ground as the prince bounded forward, his armor plates echoing his movements and coming to life with clunks and heavy clangs of thick steel.

All three attackers were dressed in a variety of leathers, pelts, and sparse bits of light, flexible animal skin for protection, but as far as Eliphas could see, they held no uniformed appearance.

Bandits or highwaymen, he concluded, nothing of serious note.

The first man to reach the prince was a large, smelly warrior with a long beard, wielding a pair of relatively matched war axes. He swung one at his throat, not displaying a complete lack of finesse, but also not skillfully enough that his intended target could not duck and pull away in time to dodge the opening strike. In response, Eliphas thrust a fist upwards in the gap of his assault, his armored knuckles smashing into his lower jaw with a force that sent several teeth, along with a spray of blood, spewing upwards and away from his ruined mouth. A crunch of splintered bone, as well as a shout of hot agony, joined together with it as he fell back and to the dirt with a crash in an instant, clutching his ruined face.

The second man was at his side quickly enough though in turn, in his hands were a dagger and a shortly curved, iron sword, and even though he was sure this man was just as unskilled as the first, the Emorian hurriedly raised his fists up to prepare to block his face and neck. The man howled a fierce cry of battle-rush, swinging downwards with his short sword and then coming forward to stab with his dagger. Eliphas had fought untrained ranks of soldiery such as this before, and the clear sign of an overconfident opponent was always one who bore two weapons, most of the time it was a fighting style whose weakness was not worth more than it’s strength, and as result, it showed.

The strike sliced down and into his gauntlet’s thick armor, sparks and a shriek of metal pinging out, but Eliphas' wrist remaining unharmed save for the sudden, prickly numbness along his hand as a result of the blow. The dagger thrust did not go overlooked though; the stab had been in reality a good attempt.
But not good enough.

 The prince caught his foe’s wrist in his grasp and contorted it so that its weapon clanked to the ground, its fingers forced open with the disarming technique applying pressure to his nerves with a painful pinch, in precisely the right places. The unarmed combat instructors of Helmont had taught him well, and Eliphas felt even they would have cracked a smile at his perfect execution of the technique just then.

A distance away, Eliphas briefly caught sight of the crossbowman finishing his reload, and as the fiend raised his fresh weapon to fire, the Emorian pulled his current assailant’s body in front of him, using the unfortunate soul as an improvised shield. The prince ducked slightly behind the bandit’s back as the thumping shot of the mechanical bow clunked again, firing a second deadly dart into the air. The sharpened tip of the crossbowman’s shot smacked with a wet crack into his fellow’s chest, burying itself into his heart with a squishing mist of red. The short sword clattered to the ground just before the fool died without a word, a wheezing noise coming from the gaping tear in his ribcage gushing blood as Eliphas quickly discard his borrowed, living cover, his anger focusing his quick reaction and pushing him to act next.

The black armored began to sprint forward with a loud bellowing reply of his own, his heavy plate having no great effect on his overall swiftness, being worn for so many years of his life, hoping at the same time to close the distance quickly enough to kill his final opponent. If the robber reloaded again, there was a decent chance the shot would find purchase at this range, and as such, Eliphas had to be as fast and as violent as he could manage if he hoped to survive this encounter.

Before he’d managed to reach halfway, however, the man cried out in abject horror as the black warrior felt first a crash, then a second, great tremor of the ground as a pair of trees were smashed down or thrashed aside with it. The force of the concussive impact sent the prince tumbling over backwards, trees shaking and earth splitting where the man with the crossbow had once been, now replaced by the foot of the monstrous creature he was traveling with, the soles and toes of which were exposed, but everything above the ankle to the lower knee garbed in its typical dark, leather-like coverings.

Blood and dirt blasted out as the man was crushed quicker than thought, his short scream silenced immediately as Daedra’s foot pulverized his existence. Eliphas rolled over as debris and dust cascaded around him, managing to look up and, finding her eyes glaring down at the mess beneath her, red liquid running between her bottom digits and coating her skin, a feral snarl of beast-like teeth and heavy breaths accompanying her sudden anger.

Without warning, the girl raised her foot and stamped it down over and over again for a few moments, shouting as she did so, emphasizing each strike with a word, and sending rocks and gravel rebounding off her small captive’s armor as he shielded his face from her wrath.

“Stupid! Little! Asshole!” She growled out with hate fueled by new pain in her back, towering now well over seventy feet into the air. Eliphas shuddered far below, wide-eyed and heart racing, a trickle of blood running down his face from the man who’s jaw and face he’d destroyed.

The last stomp brought with it a strange and sudden silence, leaving her deep, throaty inhalations the only sounds in the area being made, leaves and dust falling to the ground together all around as the earthquakes ceased.

Eliphas gulped as his eyes held her apprehensively in view, surprise and fear rising up from his guts. He had one hand up, partially covering his head from the rain of rocks that had battered the road. He pushed himself up slowly with his other hand getting to a crouch and then rising to stand hesitantly, starting to carefully rise to his feet. He didn’t want to test or provoke the horned woman, even when she wasn’t as angry, but he knew right now if he did, he would also suffer her impulsive fury.

She breathed deeply high above, as if suddenly exhausted, and as she shut her eyes and balled her fists, she opened them a moment later and glance down to where Eliphas was now standing, canine teeth bared like the fangs of a tiger.

As her eyes flared deeply and locked onto him, he forced himself to hold his ground. Eliphas held up his open hands slowly, head nodding with a shrug a mild smile that colored him impressed, immediately displaying he had no intention of commenting on Daedra’s swift ability to end life. He was not about to open his mouth and incur the horror of what he just witnessed upon himself, of course. 

Daedra growled and closed her eyes again, looking away and shrinking in an instant, back to her, “normal,” height and a small distance away. As she stood silenced, Eliphas glanced cautiously to his side and walked to the downed, bearded man, gathering up both his discarded axes an examining them momentarily as their owner moaned, half-unconscious. They were crude by design, and the handles were of slightly unequal length, but they were sharp and fairly well balanced, so he took them both for himself as his new armament.

The man with the ruined face murmured slightly, writhing weakly in pain as Eliphas neared him and saw his ravaged jaw and cheeks, weapon in hand and intent in his eyes. Without pause or regard for his slurred, pain-induced stupor, he raised the blade in his right hand and as the bandit’s eyes widened, understanding what was about to happen. Eliphas then stroked down without hesitation onto the ambusher's neck, cutting deeply enough with a spurt of rich crimson the first time and ending his pained struggles, finding no reason to keep him alive, blood splashing his lower armor plate.

Jerking the axe handle back up and free with a squelch, the black armored man rose and took a deep breath, closing his eyes and tilting his head back, calming his adrenaline and bringing himself back down from the rush of sudden combat. His head fell back down after a few moments of quiet reverence, and when his eyes came open, he cast his glance over to Daedra, who now reached around her back with futility, groping for and failing to pull out, the embedded bolt that struck her from the crossbow.

Eliphas glanced to the man he’d just killed, looking about him for anything else that might be useful, but only half putting his gaze to the task, he was still mostly allowing his attention to keep to the inhuman girl, trying hopelessly to get the shot out of her body.

“Do you require assistance?” He said without looking up, smiling widely and trying not to sound mocking.

“Piss off,” she fired back with frustration as she continued, without any improvement, to pull the annoyance free. She groaned and gasped in pain and futility each time she reached around, growing more and more tense as each attempt brought the pain up again sharply.

Eliphas turned and began to walk over to her, sighing as he did so and shaking his head back and forth, coming to stand a few feet away from Daedra as she swore and grumbled with an accompanying stab of stinging irritation. He was quiet and crossed his arms as he watched her, waiting for her to inevitably admit defeat.

She was facing away from him, but she heard him approach, ceasing her efforts as he neared and speaking out to him, clearly angry.

“Ugh…Look…Just….” Daedra began, obviously distracted by her injury, gesturing with her hands aimlessly. She next swung her body away and began to walk awkwardly towards the nearest tree, and Eliphas followed her, understanding the reason for doing so.

The two made it to the bark of the standing wood, and the girl lowered her head and placed her hands on the tree, bracing herself against its sturdy form. She arched her back and gestured reluctantly with a nod for the prince to get on with it, gripping her skin of the plant with her fingers. The girl’s firm musculature was stretched and taut with her bowed posture, her lower back solid, but not oversized, as well as her rounded posterior, mostly concealed in that strange, black leather. Eliphas couldn’t help himself steal a glance at her form. It was pleasant, though at once he shoved his creeping thoughts away and focused on his task at hand, not wanting to insult the woman, nor wanting himself become distracted at all.

“Go on then.” She said plainly, facing the tree and shutting her eyes for the imminent discomfort to come.

Eliphas slid both axes into metal rings on either side of his armored skirt, the rings purposely made to hold weapons in the event a scabbard was lost, or like now when scavenged pieces came without one. It was only just now that the prince noticed there was very little actual blood coming from the tear in her flesh, though he reminded himself this probably wasn’t anything to be surprised by. The wound was also oddly shallow, the dart itself only perhaps the span of his index finger deep into her meat, as if the skin retained that unnatural ability to resist harm. He placed his left palm flat against Daedra’s back and for the first time felt how strangely warm she was, positioning the protruding bolt shaft in between his thumb and index finger. With calm focus, he carefully wrapped his opposite hand’s fingers around the base of the shaft and then, gripped it firmly.

A moment or two passed as he waited, Daedra taking a deep breath. As she completed doing so, Eliphas jerked his arm violently and the bolt came free on the first tug, her blood spattering outwards onto his chest as the wet flesh released the sharp projectile with a squelch. 

The woman roared with pain and bared her teeth as she swung out without warning in anger, her clenched fist catching Eliphas off guard and backhanding into his cuirass with a loud, heavy thud that echoed not unlike a struck bell. The air was crushed out of his lungs as he was sent soaring and tumbling away, hitting the ground and scraping along the dirt for a couple of meters, a trail of soil and dust following after him as he landed with a crash.

His toss coming to a halt, he found himself on his back, mouth open and gasping, complete shock and pain written in his gaze as his eyes forced shut and his arm came to his cuirass.

The prince swore loudly and gripped his chest, coughing and groaning as he rolled over on the ground, pain filling his body as he struggled to rise to his knees.

Daedra arched her back and sighed with relief, smiling with her eyes closed, the red cut where the dart had entered already a fraction smaller than a moment before.

“Ahh, that’s better.”

Eliphas shouted angrily from a ways away, red in the face and eyes wide, rising to one foot, and then standing unsteadily.

“You practically shattered my ribcage, you big idiot! The hell’s wrong with you!?” Eliphas shouted, taking steps to rejoin her.

“Oh shut up, you’re fine. Besides, you should have gotten out of the way, tin-man.”

The prince made it near to Daedra, wincing as his armor settled on his now bruised torso. He stomped over to the girl and pointed a finger directly at her as he arrived.

“I swear you’re the fucking worst!” He shouted, his anger rising with a dangerous disregard for whom he was speaking, “You kidnap me, slaughter my men, force me to do ridiculous things for your personal hygiene, and constantly berate me for no reason!” The girl stood quietly with a smirk of teeth on her face, uncaring it would seem for the man’s latest burst of intolerance.

“Then, when I try and help you, even just a tiny bit, you practically punch a hole in my sternum!”

Daedra was enjoying herself immensely, for the first time since she could remember, she was actually entertained by something that she wasn’t about to kill.

“Yeah, I kidnapped you, to sell you. Remember?” She said shrugging and closing her eyes, hands coming up with the pose, “you expect me to be sweet and kind to you? Have you ever been ransomed before? That’s not exactly how it goes.”

Eliphas’ temper flared again, and shaped his hands into upturned claws, frustrated at the obvious point she was missing.

“No, you freak! I expect to live long enough to be ransomed back and return home! Isn’t that the point?! If you kill me, or shatter my damn spine, you won’t get anything for all this nonsense!”

The girl made an exaggerated display of thinking, leaning on one leg, her toned lower body pulling tight musculature as she tapped a finger on her chin, looking to the sky.

“Hmmm,” she began with a sarcastic tone, “maybe I don’t intend to get paid, maybe I just enjoy torturing you?” She replied, muttering the last sentence and looking back to him, staring sharply into his eyes and grinning savagely.

“I doubt that very much, if that were true we wouldn’t be traveling away from your home. Do you think me a fool?”

“Yes.” She came back at once, not erasing her smile, rubbing dirt in his proverbial wound, obviously taunting him and hoping to insight further reactions.

“You’re insane,” Eliphas said with finality, shouldering his bulk passed Daedra as she turned and laughed after him, heading over to the large indention in the ground that was the girl’s new footprint.

“Yeah? Well, you’re ugly! No wonder you became a soldier!”

Eliphas ignored her and trudged on, he was quite done with his outburst, and fought now to stifle its aftereffects. He wanted to check the other bodies and their contents, if people were going to attack them on the road, he wanted to scavenge anything that might prove useful later.

Heading over to where a tree or two had been flattened by Daedra’s foot, the black prince glanced around half-cautiously and then stood at the ground’s slight edge, where the enormous footprint she’d produced a bit ago began. He swallowed as his eyes scanned back and forth, the mess of red and pink slop at its center the apparent focus of his interest.

The girl made her way to his side and nodded with a smile, admiring her handiwork, or perhaps footwork, being the correct description of the scene.

“I have to admit, it felt good to kill something. I haven’t squished someone in almost two whole days!”

Eliphas glanced over to Daedra as she joked with what felt like gleeful honesty, his eyes clearly judgmental.

“What?” She said next, shrugging and surprised at his serious demeanor, “you’re going to try and tell me you didn’t enjoy yourself just now?”

The man rolled his eyes and sighed refusing to answer that suggestion, looking forwards and dropping down into the footprint with a clunk of his armored bulk, sliding up one of his newly acquired axes and coming to a kneel next to the former man’s remains.

“What are you doing?” she called down as she narrowed her eyes.

“Just looking. Give me a moment.”

Daedra scoffed and chuckled, crossing her arms and then playing with one of her index finger’s nails.

“I think his wounds are beyond your care human.”

Eliphas ignored her once more, taking the blade of his axe and prodding around for what he could discern may be the man’s trousers. There was something about what the woman had said last night, that this part of the woodlands was relatively safe, and how confident she seemed to be in that determination. He thought to himself, correctly he found, that something wasn’t quite right.

A flap on the “body’s,” midriff came open with a sticky flop, the material that resembled vaguely leather, gross and wet with some manner of gore. Eliphas stuck his hand into the leather hole and shuffled his armored fingers around, extracting something like crushed animal teeth and bone in his palm as he brought it all out into the light.

Daedra cast her gaze around as if to search for threats amongst the trees as she stood at the lip of the print, all the while impatiently waiting for her taken prize to complete his strange search of the pile of mushed remains.

Tossing the bones away, finding nothing of value, Eliphas went to the same spot of the opposite side and with his bloodied gauntlet, flipped that pocket open and searched it as well.

His brow furrowed and he plucked his fingers onto what felt like parchment.

When his hand came out, he found he did indeed hold a folded bit of paper, red runnels of liquid staining one corner of its shape.

Eliphas rose to his feet and slid his axe back into the ring on his hip, carefully opening the discovery that was about the size of a large, adult man’s thumb.

“Hey ugly,” Daedra called from behind, her notice of something possibly valuable in his grasp that had taken his interest, “what did you find?”

Eliphas read the contents of the short message to himself, as it was in a language he could understand he was surprised to find. His eyes came up as Daedra called out to him from behind, but he remained silent as the note’s meaning sunk into his mind. Eliphas raised his head slowly and looked about the trees with sudden suspicion, feeling almost at once as if he were being watched.

The man turned at last and began to take steps towards the waiting woman. He offered the piece of unfolded paper in between his index and middle finger for the horned girl to take, and as she did so, he spoke, in a very serious tone as his eyes kept searching around anxiously.

“Is this road called Multa?”

Daedra looked down at the paper as she read the two words written in black ink, scratched into the surface it seemed like in a hurry, by an unskilled hand.

She frowned slightly at his insight proving correct, crumbling the small note in her hand and discarding it before making eye contact with Eliphas as they both stared in mutual silence. The pair understood now that the small ambush was not a random bout of highway robbery, it was instead the grossly underprepared site for a murder, one that, unfortunately for them, did not go as planned.

“We need to go,” Eliphas said as if it were a command, his voice stern and sounding used to giving orders that were never to be questioned.

This discarded, crumpled piece of paper the pair had read reading, as it sat in the dirt, "By Multa."

“Remind me again why we’re waiting…” Eliphas murmured, hunched and concealed in thick green bushes with branches barbed by thorns, the night black color of his armor blending in poorly with the minor shadows, just as well as Daedra’s apparel did for her.

She replied back quietly, her voice calm and carefree, though not without a small touch of humor.

“I just want to see who’s going inside, alright? Why are you so eager to become a slave?”

The prince of Emoria frowned and glared over to the girl, who had similarly concealed herself within the same bit of vegetation the human lord had chosen. Though he kept his movements to a minimum, he couldn’t help but make noise every time he shifted, and he was becoming oddly self-conscious of her, by comparison, silent nature.

“I’m asking because subterfuge is not one of my preferred activities,” he trailed off a moment before muttering, looking away and off to the distance to the building the horned woman eyed intently.

“I’m just not very good at it is all. It’s… rather difficult to hide me…” the warrior said with a small nip of embarrassment.

Daedra glanced at him and smiled, her eyes glowing despite the midday sun, rather suddenly playful with his apparent shortcoming, as well as any possible chance he felt vulnerable.

“I could put you in my pocket if you want…” Then her tone and eyes narrowed, and in contrast, her smile grew wider before adding,

“…Or…I could find a different place to hide you…” the girl said with a tiny wink and a now full smirk of pointed teeth.

Eliphas closed his eyes and felt his left brow twitch, feeling an odd combination of curious emotions, though mostly unease as he tried to keep quiet, cutting back his voice as he blurted out, with a sharp retort,

“I’m merely suggesting,” he snapped with emphasis, “we take a different position, someone is likely to see us if I’m this close, are we not trying to remain concealed?”

Directly in front of the hiding pair, their squabbling going, for the most part, unnoticed, was a clearing of the forest about a hundred yards wide in every direction, the earth grassy and the soil a light brown in patches. Where the trees opened up to the sky, there was a small building or inn of sorts made of grey bricks and pale mortar, its construct looking to Eliphas like some type of ancient, ruined fortress, though much smaller in practical terms. Its form, he concluded, resembled a church or place of worship designed by a mason who meant it to last through the winter and rain of the local climate, though guessing by the noise and music coming from inside, as well as the complete lack of guards manning its pair of heavy wooden doors, this had long ceased to be a concern.

There was nobody outside, except for of course Daedra and the Emorian, though the two had waited for some time and had yet to move into the clearing, the woman insisting they take note of who came and went, though no developments of that type had come to pass. Eliphas had not asked whom Daedra had been waiting for, and he wasn’t even sure if she knew herself.

“Just a bit longer, settle down, I just want to see who might be here.”

She turned to face him placing her hand on his shoulder and gripping one of the trio of spikes on his pauldron, risking a small amount of physical interaction,

“You worry too much,” she said softly with a hushed voice, her eyes shutting and her lips curling confidently, “I’m very experienced in stealth, its been one of my skills since childho-“

“Oh hey there Daedra!” a voice called from behind the two, both Eliphas and Daedra shouting in surprise and jumping as they turned in unison. The horned girl hurled herself onto her captive’s armored frame and clung to it like a child, shock and surprise clearly written on both of their faces as Eliphas stood and wheeled them around to face the newcomer.

There was a girl there, slightly younger in appearance than the duo before her, holding a wooden bucket nearly filled to the rim with clean, glistening water.

“W…What are you doing in the bushes?...” she said with a puzzled set of soft, blue eyes. She was similarly blue-haired, and garbed in a simple, off-white dress of kinds, casual in its functionality, but still graceful in its appearance. As the girl blinked a few times in silence, she looked at Eliphas, and he as well gazed at her. She was, by any measure, very pretty, and the prince was glad to finally see someone who wasn’t some kind of savage for the first time in days.

As Eliphas and the girl with the bucket looked away from each other, their small moment passing quickly, the lord of Emoria glanced down and realized that he was holding Daedra in his left arm, her figure clutching his armored body tight. He glared down at her and made a disdainful growling sound, the left half of his mouth’s teeth flashing as the horned girl chuckled up to him nervously in response.

He shoved her off and away angrily, Daedra landing to the ground with a thud as he began dusting himself off, trying to look more dignified.

“Who…Who’s your friend, Daedra?” The smaller girl said anxiously, her ocean blue eyes betraying her sudden, mild discomfort.

“Huh? Oh,” the inhuman responded dismissively as she too got to her uncovered feet, “This is Eliphas, he’s uh…”

She hesitated for a second it seemed, but the girl appeared not to notice as both women looked to the large, black shape of the prince.

“He’s working with me!…” Daedra said, covering her tracks, “We’ve come looking for Graggas, have you seen him lately?”

Eliphas’ captor gestured towards the lone building behind the trees, revealing apparently, whom they had been watching for this whole time.

“Actually, you’re in luck, he’s just come in a while ago! I’m headed back now, I just had to go for some more water. Come inside and I’ll make you both something to drink!” The girl said with a smile and a shallow bow to Eliphas before she finished hurriedly with,

“I’m Maribel, my family owns the Moss Grove Tavern.”

Her words were laced with nervous hesitation, and while they were directed to Eliphas, the girl, he found, could not bring her eyes back up from the ground to meet his own for whatever reason.

“I apologize for not introducing myself,” she muttered, as if the prince were going to be furious, “I was… I’m just in a hurry, is all…”

The noble son of the king smiled and nodded his head with respect, the anxious, small woman seeing this kind gesture and looking now more at ease as he spoke,

“Your apology is unnecessary. Please, carry on with your task,” he said taking a half step backward and allowing her room to walk.

With that, Maribel smiled at them both and passed between them, weaving through the bushes and heading back to the stone-built tavern as she hurried to return to her work. Daedra and Eliphas watched her go as his captor spoke, sighing as she did so.

“Maribel,” she stated again as the blue-eyed maiden had, “She’s sweet, and naïve, so don’t go messing with her, got it? She’s fragile, so if you touch her, I’ll eat you with soup.”

Eliphas shot Daedra a harsh look of offended surprise, again returning to the pair’s favorite hobby of making insults at one another.

“Why is it that you assume I will pillage and rape every place and female we happen across, hm? Do I appear to you as some kind of monster?”

Daedra scoffed and rolled her eyes, walking the same direction Maribel had gone, saying over to the noble without turning to regard him, the man beginning to follow her into the open.

“She likes you is why, and she doesn’t take to most people because she’s so shy. So leave her alone.” The horned girl, who was suddenly soft, and strangely defensive of another.

“My mind doesn’t think like yours, Daedra. No one's does I’d wager.”

Daedra took this comment and declined to continue further. He wasn’t wrong, Eliphas, but she wondered how much he would disagree if he had come to learn more of who, and not what she was. The pair had spent the last few days together, and she had learned what she felt were important details of who the black lord was before his capture, but he had yet to glimpse any specific details about her own life or story. He did know that she had unnatural abilities, which no one else not of her kind knew, but he didn’t know who she was. Neither of them, she thought quietly, actually did. She wanted to, and she could feel that in her bones, but Daedra understood that their time together was nearly at an end, and she was trying extremely hard not to get attached to him.

However, as the pair neared the large, wood and iron rivet door to the Moss Grove, she found herself feeling every moment that came and went, taking the two closer towards that end, more and more difficult to endure. Almost as if, in truth, she did not want to give him up. Not just yet, anyway.

Then her stomach growled painfully, and she remembered the last time she’d eaten properly was nearly half a week ago, besides of course the bowman she’d swallowed when she had attacked Eliphas’ cute little warriors, and he, unfortunately, had given her a stomach ache.

# # # #

Inside it was packed, and loud, completely the opposite of how the crisp, outdoor clearing had felt moments before the pair had entered. Daedra led the way just a hand span away from the Emorian, as the two came inside, they got a few curious looks from the other patrons, but nothing much more than cursory glances. There was joyous music being played by a couple of the taverns inhabitants, stringed instruments and a flute chorusing lively as dozens of men, women, and more than a couple of species Eliphas wasn’t familiar with laughed, hooted, and shouted gleefully around tables and a long bar.

Most of the crowded tavern had tankards or mugs of heavy wood in hand or nearby, a few pairs of strongly built, half-lizard, half-men, arm-wrestled near to a window with bulging, green-scaled musculature and staring with hostile intent in their eyes. There were groups here and there, and as Eliphas and Daedra shuffled around and between people in the crowded establishment, he caught a small, genuine smile on her face, something in her eyes that spoke of familiarity or comfort, and it had the human wondering if this was something akin to her home away from home. There was a round table near the middle of the single enormous room, the ceiling high and the walls arched above and lit with huge iron chandeliers. A portly, ugly man sat at the table laughing with another equally filthy and rugged human, and as the pair approached, the thickly set guest raised an eyebrow and spoke with an overly gleeful smile.

“Dae, my dear, is that you?” His voice was sickly sounding, as if his throat and nasal cavity were full of phlegm, and as it came out of his mouth, Daedra resisted the urge to make an irritated face. She detested Graggas, he was vile and irritating, but he was the only means to an end she could find within half a dozen leagues.

Arms raised up and to his sides, the round man wore a smile right up until the precise moment he caught a look at Eliphas, the sight of which, immediately appeared to set him uneasy.

“Graggas, long time no see,” she replied back curtly, trying her best to seem pleasant. Graggas might have sensed this feigned attempted at being polite, but his eyes were now fixed, on the black iron figure at her side.

A few extra seconds than necessary passed, but the unsightly man spoke again, tearing his gaze away from Eliphas who had met it, and gesturing to his companion to leave them.

“Yes, it had been a couple of months. I was worried you’d left town and gone to find someone else to sell scraps to!”

Graggas’ accent was of a culture the Emorian was not familiar with, guttural, and sounding as ugly as the man whose mouth it toppled out of with each syllable.

Daedra grabbed a nearby chair and sat down with a sigh, not clear if out of relief or reluctance at the situation. She placed her crossed arms close to and covering her chest, leaning over the table edge, tilting her head and looking over towards the presented human with a neutral face.

“I’ve been busy, that’s all. And today I’ve come to discuss a little business, if you’re willing.”

This drew another glance from the foreign man, up and over at Eliphas, who had eschewed the use of a chair and remained standing behind Daedra, as if he were some kind of bodyguard.

“Business?” The man began with a low, suspicious tone, the earlier glee now evaporating, “You’ve come to sell, that?”

The man, as if surprised, gestured with a dirty, hairy hand and a raised eyebrow towards the metal-clad Eliphas, as if he were a dirty trinket and not a living human being.

Daedra glanced up and over towards her human captive for an instant, as if to inspect him for damage or fault, unsure of Graggas’ sudden reluctance. Eliphas momentarily met her eyes and stayed silent.

“Yea, I came to see if you’d want him before I offered him to someone else,” she continued, “I thought you dealt in the slave trade a bit, Graggas?”

“I do,” he replied with a thick, mucus-laced, tone, “but he’s not slave material. He’s not the kind of sort I’m interested in. He’s not like the others you’ve brought to me before.”

Daedra blinked in disbelief, surely, someone as strong, intelligent, and well equipped as Eliphas would fetch a huge price? She was suddenly confused and taken aback, why would Graggas say something like that? Who wouldn’t be interested in this former General, this Lord of Emoria?

She was partly stunned at the reaction he was attracting from her potential customer, it was as if the two were debating over a completely different person.

“That,” Graggas said with a quick glance and a frown towards Eliphas, “would slit your throat as soon as it would fill your drinking cup. There’s no telling what he’d do if he had no chains. I’m not interested in it. Take this black brick to someone else, Dae.”

Everything was abruptly going sour, the food and drink Daedra had been envisioning the last few days was evaporating before her eyes. She thought to finally enjoy herself for once, really this time, maybe if the Emorian had fetched a huge helping, she’d finally find a more suitable place to…

This just wasn’t acceptable. She had to try again, use every trick or position she had to sell this new prey of hers. She had to salvage something, her groaning stomach pushed her forwards with new desperation at the prospect of leaving empty-handed.

“Why isn’t he slave material? Look at him! He could do manual labor for days,” she continued with new vigor.

Graggas waved her away dismissively before she could even finish, “I don’t know how you managed it Dae, even right now, but that thing won’t listen to anyone, it’s a wonder you got him here in the first place. Just look at him!”

Daedra blinked at the statement, but did just as the trader suggested. She looked up and over towards Eliphas who glanced down at her with a cold stare, shrugging his oversized, spike shoulders as she did so. There was something in his eyes, not bitterness or even spite at this strange development, only an icy assurance that told her he agreed with the statement.

She knew little of him, but there didn’t seem like there was anything incredibly out of the ordinary about Eliphas…and yet, Daedra knew, somehow, someway, there was. Ever since they’d met, since they’d fought, she knew he was different. There was something in him that was more than what he said, did, or spoke. Something…dangerous, inside him.

Daedra turned back again and continued, strangely feeling a little unsettled now.

“Well, he can fight, that’s gotta be worth something, doesn’t it? To someone, right?”

Graggas heard the horned girl’s words but didn’t look away from Eliphas as he stood silent and largely motionless, impassive and having not said a word, but having heard the entire exchange. The slaver and the warrior locked eyes, and the trader became clearly uncomfortable after a moment’s stare down.

“Yeah, bet he can…” the chubby, stout man said lowly, as if anxious and only to his own ears, “can’t yah, boy?” he concluded loud enough for Eliphas to assume he was asked the question directly.

The Emorian simply looked down at the man as his silent, steel glare sent his attention away.

“No one will buy him, not me, not anyone else Dae. You hear?”

Daedra almost fell out of her chair. She risked a lot capturing this human, this lord of sorts, and here she was being denied even a shred of payment for her less than legal adventure. His rank, his age, his strength, all of this made Eliphas practically worth his weight in coppers, maybe even silvers, and here Graggas was saying she’d get not a single coin for all her trouble.

“What’s wrong with him, Graggas? He’s probably worth everyone else in here combined, and you won’t take him? Why?”

Graggas looked just now as if he were caught in a lie, and right then, Daedra knew there was something more.

At last, the disheveled man responds, nervously looking up to Eliphas as he mutters,

“I won’t speak while it’s standing there…” not trying in the slightest to hide his discontent and hesitation before the black-armored man.

Daedra sighs and leans back in her chair, reflexively miming with her hands on the table a gesture of reluctance as they tap the wood. She turns around to Eliphas as the tavern continues its gleeful atmosphere around the trio, everyone else it would seem oblivious to their discussion.

“Just go wait outside. I’ll come for you when it’s done,” she says, trying to hide her disappointment at the prospect of selling him still, an eventuality she seems to anticipate regardless of how the conversation goes.

At first, it looks like Eliphas will resist, but he sees for a moment, a small look of real sadness that the horned girl is trying to keep private. It affects him for some reason to see her that way, so he gives in without a word spoken, just a nod as he turns and heads away from the table, uncertain if he’ll ever see those glowing eyes again.

“Wait out by the front door, if I don’t see you, you know what happens,” Daedra calls out to him, though he doesn’t even turn to respond or even acknowledge her.

The girl watches him go, weaving gracefully for something his size in between the other patrons and leaving out through the light of the front door they came in.

Whatever she’s feeling now in this instant, in the next Daedra’s emotions are scattered, as Graggas continues to speak once more.

“I’d be doing you a great favor, you know, taking that one off ya hands. Probably even saving your life.”

“Yeah,” she begins, turning back around to the table, “I had hoped not to starve to death.”

“That’s not what I mean, Lyraxian.” He says, in a rare and cordial use of her race’s formal name.

“He’s a bad omen, that one. He’s one of those in black, the cursed and the lost.”

Daedra’s eyes shift and they narrow at the quizzical nature of Graggas’ words and his sudden, almost conspiratorial tone.

“Cursed and lost? What are you talking about?”

Graggas looks past the horned girl to the door, as if to confirm the man who’d just left somehow can’t hear or bear witness to what he’s about to say.

“I slave trade, girl. I’ve seen and heard things beyond your years. I have never seen their like, but I’ve ‘eard of them. They’re from the west… The far west… beyond the Vallor peaks. Farther than anyone’s been in ages, Dae. They wore black, had the names of the dead carved into their armored skins, and they did terrible things for a thousand years to this realm.”

Daedra was silent, whatever Graggas was on about, he seemed to believe it, and he seemed genuinely afraid.

“Emorians, you mean? He said he was from Emoria.” She ventured.

Graggas waved her words away and continued, at a quicker pace, his growing anxiety making him speak faster.

“I don’t remember what they were called, alright? I just know what they were and that they’re dangerous. They bring death to those who ever run into them and destroy the lives of common folk like us for no reason whatsoever. And look at him Dae, he’s out here alone, out here in the middle of the land they used to have mastery over. Why? Because his own people can’t even stand him, that’s why! The other half of the world spit him out, because those devils never take to anyone or anything!”

The inhuman girl was finding it hard to make sense of anything the slave trader was saying, he was going so fast, saying things that couldn’t be true. She’d never even heard of these people, and before finding Eliphas and capturing him, she’d never even known his lands had existed. There was probably many hundreds of peoples or places she’d never see in her life, why were these Emorians suddenly so important? The world was too big, and oftentimes full of stories and nonsense.

“You’re not making any sense human, what are you trying to say, that he’s some type of monster?”

Graggas raised his voice sharply and glared across the table, his point being lost, but regarded the people around the tavern and tried to measure his temper so that no one would notice.

“No Daedra, I’m trying to tell you they’re ALL monsters. They aren’t men, maybe not even human. They had a taste of what it was like to rule this world, and someday they’ll want it back!”

The girl was quiet suddenly, overwhelmed by everything Graggas was saying and getting more lost in the words every second they flew by. It was crazy, all of it, and this was the first time she’d ever heard anything like this. Why now? Why not before? She wanted to believe it was the ramblings of a dirty old man, and that he was speaking in myths or common campfire stories. But then, deep down, Daedra knew there was a time when men told stories about monsters like herself, and those didn’t turn out to be myths either.

“You need to cut him loose and hope that’s the end of it. It would be even better to kill him, that’s the only way to be sure, but I personally wouldn’t take my chances if I were you.”

“Kill him?” Daedra cut in at once, “Why would I do something like that?!”

“Because, you stupid girl,” the man came back frustrated, “his kind is wrong. There’s something very, very wrong with them… He’s hated and feared! And for good bloody reason!”

Daedra had had enough, and there it was written on her face for Graggas to see. Her stare was blank until she shook her head frowning, looking off and away from the table, from the conversation itself, entertained no longer. She stood and looked down at the messy human, regretting ever having met him, only thankful for his brief and convoluted history lesson and the few other times he’d paid her for her previous work.

“So am I,” she said with heavy finality and with as much emotion in her glare that she could pour into the look she gave him.

# # # #

Eliphas was standing outside in the easy breeze, adjacent to the door to the tavern, the sun, warm on his face and coming through brightly into the open clearing. There were more people out here, he found to his surprise, a caravan of sorts, and from the looks of it all, they were bringing supplies or goods to sell to the patrons and the owners of the tavern.

About two dozen commoners were milling about, tending to wagons or other cargo-filled carts, some driven by livestock, others small enough to be pushed by a single person. The traders seemed to be from some type of nearby town or similar village, nothing they transported looked particularly exotic or outlandish, mostly fruit, vegetables, and the occasional barrel or two carrying liquids.

The Emorian gazed around as the people, maybe just under two dozen, talked and exchanged interest with one another’s goods and other pleasantries. Some of the men and women spoke languages he was not familiar with, but a man, a very elderly man who tended a stuck wheel to his horse-drawn cart, cursed frustratedly as he toiled with the seal in one he knew.

Eliphas began to trudge over towards the cart, his armor’s racket casting away all hopes of subtlety as he saw the elderly man stand up with a concerned look on his face, hearing him approach.

“You there, you can understand my words, correct?”

The man hesitated and blinked nervously, but nodded his head quickly. The elder was wearing a small round grey hat, and his body was similarly covered in simple clothing to match his beard and other weathered features of near the same color. In his hand, he held a small metal container, round and filled with a black paste, oil or some type of grease it seemed for the damaged cart.

“Y-yes young master, something the matter?”

“No, I noticed you struggling with the wheel, and was wondering if I could offer you aid in return for a conversation.”

The older human still looked nervous, but seemed relieved that’s all the large, black-iron warrior wanted.

“Oh…Oh aye, then. What did you-“

Eliphas knelt by the wheel an examined it for a moment, seeing at once what was causing it to stick and cease its smooth rolling. In one motion, the prince slid clear his knife from the scabbard on his boot, causing the trader to flinch at the sound, and worked the tip of the blade into the space between the axle and hub.

“How far is the village or town you came from?” Eliphas said without looking up, his full intent dedicated to the mending of the cart.

“Village? Oh right, yes, well its Gilla, and it’s about a day’s journey from here if the weather holds nicely. Nothing much to look at, but we’ve plenty of food and crop to go around these days, season’s been good to us I’m happy to say!” the man said with a laugh towards the end.

The armored Eliphas balled his right fist and struck the flat pommel of the knife a trio of times, a hard, metal on metal sound resounding out as a piece of shaped rock came flinging out after the last hammer, freeing the wheel to spin correctly at last.

“Which way, and is that grease,” the Emorian said, gesturing to the man’s small tin, and reaching out.

 The old trader handed the tin over and the younger man found it was what he had assumed, putting a knob of the black paste onto his index finger and working it into the contact point.

“It’s towards the way we came,” the man said gesturing off behind Eliphas, “the road these days can be a bit, well, dangerous, but not if you travel in a group as we’ve been doin.”

The prince stood and tugged on the metal rim of the wheel a few times to test its hold and work the grease around the interior of the hub, finding the repair had been complete without much difficulty. He felt in his palm however, the grease of the cart’s owner, and came to a small realization and future use for the paste.

“Could I buy the rest from you by chance?” Eliphas said as he retrieved a coin from the bag at his hip, the one Daedra still didn’t know he had.

He produced a copper piece and the old man’s eyes lit up at the sight of it. Apparently, this was a very one-sided exchange, but the man seemed kind and honest, so the prince didn’t care much for a good price or deal. Besides, recent events might see him lose all of it soon regardless.

# # # #

Daedra came out from the door to the tavern, a hundred questions on her mind, feeling frustrated, broke, and still unable to shake the nagging hunger in her empty stomach despite all of that.

She suddenly noticed Eliphas was gone, as she cast her eyes around a new group of merchants who looked like they’d just arrived, and for a moment she swore in her mind and was about to bring up her hand to snap her fingers. She was hoping he hadn’t gotten far enough that she wouldn’t find him, and half hoped a bird or a snake wouldn’t beat her too him if she had too, but just before she could, she found his normally large stature hunched over and working at some cart for an old man.

He was…He was fixing the wheel, it looked like. The inhuman girl blinked a few times in surprise without intending too, and for a strange instant, she felt something for him. Maybe it was her hunger finally getting to her head, or maybe she was just exhausted after the conversation with Graggas, but she couldn’t help but sigh and smile with her eyes closed, dipping her head and shaking it slowly from side to side in disbelief. He was naïve, and while he looked sweet, and she had glimpsed small peaks at what he was really like on the inside, Daedra had seen what he could do with an axe. She had seen him kill and inflict pain, and while it gave her a flush of intriguing pleasure at the sight, she had once been on the receiving end of his wroth.

Eliphas stood and tested the wheel as he moved in front of the old man, taking a small tin and placing it under his armored skirt as they spoke.

“Hey, Eliphas!” Daedra found herself calling, “Come on, time to go.”

The Emorian turned and regarded her, nodding his head and exchanging a farewell to the nice old man, turning to head away and back towards the tavern, his armored form trudging towards her call.

“Young master!” the trader called from behind.

Eliphas turned and smoothly caught a large red apple as it flew over to him from the man, one he had fished out quickly from his stock of things to sell from the cart. He spoke over to him loud enough for Daedra to hear and when she did, a lot of things happened she hadn’t anticipated ever feeling.

“For the wife, good sir.” The trader said with a smile and a wave to Daedra.

Eliphas hesitated, but nodded and waved, turning for the last time as he neared the outside of The Moss Grove.

Daedra couldn’t help herself, and began to immediately play with the situation.

“Hussssband! For me?!” She said with a huge smile, wide bright eyes, and moving to place a hand on his bulky cuirass.

Eliphas replied lowly and glanced around to the other merchants with a fake smile.

“He probably thinks because we’re wearing the same color we’re together.”

Daedra replies again, loudly, keeping the same, unashamed tone she had used a moment before.

“Of course we’re together, you didn’t think I was gonna let any one of those people inside take you from me, did you? You’re all mine you silly thing!”

“The old man, is he still looking this way?” The Emorian says with a low mutter and a twitching eyebrow.

Daedra blinks a moment in confusion and glances around Eliphas, seeing that the merchant is indeed still looking over.

“Uh, yeah, why?” she says at a normal volume and pitch, slightly confused.

“Because I don’t want him to see me hit you.”

“You mentioned your family owns this place, your mother, and father as well I imagine, where have they gone off too?”

Eliphas sat upon a heavy wooden bar stool, across from Maribel, her hands busy drying the inner walls of a line of drinking tankards as he spoke, an identical one of his own in front of him in one hand.

“Oh yes, both my father and mother have gone off to Gilla a few days back, trying to meet up with a new grain salesperson, hopefully. It’s easier to meet new people out there instead of here in the middle of nowhere.”

The prince nodded and flexed his cheeks downward, understanding more or less the common enough logistical challenges of running a business, or more in his case, a kingdom.

The tavern was completely empty, save for the trio of the warrior, barmaid, and the prostrated woodland creature, who lay on her back upon a vacant round table, arms sprawled and looking over at the pair as they talked, her head dipped over the side and her vision upside-down. They’d been alone for about an hour since the last customers had gone, though it wasn’t late into the night, just near the latter parts of the evening, and the humans at the bar had been speaking most of that time.

Daedra had consumed nearly every leftover or unfinished tankard of drink there was in the place, and though there weren’t as many as she had hoped, the Lyraxian was fully and shamelessly inebriated. She looked over at the two, glancing her eyes away or closing them when she thought Maribel might catch her spying on them.

Earlier, what she had said about the younger girl was true, she didn’t want Eliphas to mess with her, though it had seemed like at the time it was because she felt threatened by her pet warlord. The reverse, however, had been true. She was more threatened, it would seem, by a fellow female.

Talking seemed to come so easily to the barmaid despite her usual shy nature, evening now she was holding Eliphas' attention decently enough. Every so often she would giggle, brighten with a smile, or even make a small joke herself, and though Daedra was glad to see Eliphas was difficult to impress or bring to a grin, she couldn’t help but feel inadequate.

“Wait a minute,” the horned girl thought to herself, “Why am I glad he’s not smiling? Why am I thinking of him at all?”

After that she immediately shook her head, frustrated.

She had the answer, it was obvious, but she wasn’t ready to admit it to herself. That and she was the drunkest she had been in the last half a year. She could feel the pricks of jealously growing though, relentlessly, and she found she either didn’t try, or wasn’t capable of sending them away.

“I’m about done here, I just need to take these pitchers outback. Then, maybe I’ll go see what’s left around to eat, if you’d both like?” Maribel said with a quick glance to Daedra, who she’d definitely just now caught watching the pair at the bar.

The girl on the table sighed and heard the young human walk off and away carrying a crate of items, departing through a side door that lead outside to the back of the building, which had an attached store for supplies, and a small barn just to its rear.

Now was her chance, Eliphas was alone and sitting quietly at the bar, she wouldn’t get a better moment than this.

The human lord heard his captor get off the nearby table, clumsily knocking a cup or two onto the floor with a clang as she did so and barely managing to wobble over to a chair he sat adjacent to. She mounted it, with as little grace as she could muster, and sat quietly next to the large armored figure.

Daedra wasn’t thinking straight, so of course, she decided to speak, the drinks she’d put away themselves maybe giving her the courage to do so in the first place.

“What did Maribel?…W-what are you drinking?” she said as if in a slight daze, her head turning and eyeing him with those glowing yellow orbs of hers, still brilliant and bright. The area around her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were flush crimson and even though he didn’t want to, Eliphas answered reluctantly.

“It’s just water with lemon, if you must know.” He said flatly, hoping, but knowing full well that was not the end of their interaction. He had played this game before, unfortunately.

“Oh,” the horned girl said in a vain attempt to keep the conversation going, clearly uncomfortable with making small conversation.

Silence followed then. Eliphas looked straight ahead as if in trying hard to ignore the girl's arrival, though Daedra, in contrast, looked about the large room as if anxious, almost as if she was waiting for something to happen.

Dissatisfied by how things were going, and with about as much subtly as a giant girl smashing a tree with her foot, Daedra lifted her hips and scooted the chair she was sitting on over towards the man, the wood support legs grinding out with dull screeches twice, echoing through the empty hall loudly.

Eliphas shifted uncomfortably and rolled his eyes at this new development, but Daedra seemed not to notice either of those responses to her desire to be closer to him.

A noiseless air deadened the tavern once more, the two saying nothing and the prince quietly hoping Maribel would appear again soon to rescue him from whatever advances this passed for.

Daedra it would appear had other plans, however, and suddenly Eliphas felt her weight set upon his shoulder, his body tensing as her head came to rest against his right arm and pauldron. He glanced down quickly to check with his senses to see if his confusion was justified, and it was.

“What are you doing?” He said sternly, without any feeling.

“I’m tired…” the girl mumbled out, almost not loud enough to hear well enough, a mood or symptom of something that before now had been entirely unseen in her character.

Eliphas blinked and tried to stifle his rising irritation.

“Well get off me,” he said slightly louder, shaking the right side of his body and forcing Daedra to rise back up and mostly straight, closing her eyes and pursing her lips as if saddened or disappointed in herself.

The horned girl heard and then saw Maribel reappear a ways away, looking about for things dropped to the floor and discarded by patrons during the day’s business. The black lord looked over too and noticed her return, and Daedra saw him sit up and adjust his posture correcting his minor slouch.

“Why,” she started again without thinking, looking to Eliphas, “why do you like talking to her, and… and not to me?”

The human warlord regarded the woodland devil for a moment, if only just, and promptly turned back to face his body forwards, refusing to indulge her ridiculous question.

"Is it because I...Because I killed all your friends? And...And maybe cus I kidnapped you?"Daedra said almost apologetically, with a new pitiful look on her face.

Eliphas closed his eyes as his face turned to a frown, his grip tensing on his tankard in response to this latest comment, not a positive reaction she could tell, and a clear one. The horned woman felt as though she was making all the wrong moves, saying all the wrong things. Even now still messing up everything she touched.

Daedra watched him and felt hurt by his coldness he displayed at her honest attempt to interact pleasantly, though he clearly wasn’t concerned with her attempts nor her effort. Not even something like being sorry for what she had done to him, or at least admitting it in a roundabout way.

Daedra’s emotions became unstable, flooding from one spectrum of her heart to another in an instant. She looked over to Maribel and frowned, closing her eyes and rising from her stool slowly and unsurely.

“Fine…Go to hell, tin-man.” Daedra muttered as she took one unsteady step, Eliphas not even looking over to watch her go.

The girl misplaced her first trod, and then as she tried to right her balance, she fell to the cold wooden floor with a tumble onto her side into a crumpled heap, lying there for a moment and slow to rise to her hands and knees.

Her prisoner did watch her now. He gazed down at her and didn’t move. He didn’t make a comment, a joke, or even appear to regard her with any particular emotion, not even pity.

Daedra breathed hard through her mouth, her dark black hair falling over her face, obscuring her vision.

Carefully, the horned girl rose once more, and got hesitantly to her feet, propping herself up as slowly as she could manage before taking barely another couple of steps. Maribel was watching her go as well, trying to make her way to the same door she’d just come from herself.

“Mari, I’ll sleep in the barn tonight, if that’s alright with you…” Daedra said as she neared a table edge, her footing unsteady.

“Uh…Sure, Daedra, but do you want some-”

Daedra lost her balance another time and stumbled down into the table, knocking a couple of tankards and silverware loudly to the floor, falling back down to her knees and left hand, her right arm resting on the wooden edge, keeping her from impacting the floor completely again.

And still Eliphas just watched without a word.

Maribel looked to Daedra and back and forth to the Emorian, expecting, almost imploring him to rise and give the struggling woman assistance. He made no move to help though, and he wasn’t going too.

The sweet barmaid placed down her cargo and walked over to her horned, half-naked friend, leaning down and preparing to help her to her feet as she neared.

“Let’s get you ou-“She began to say as she touched Daedra’s forearm.

Without warning, however, the woman shouted at the top of her lungs, fury rising in a hot surge at the mere act of being helped by anyone else in the world.

Daedra jerked her arm away and hurriedly rose back to her feet, overflowing with anger that came from nowhere.

“Get the hell away from me, human! I don’t need your help!”

Maribel flinched and brought her arms close to her chest, reeling from the uncharacteristic outburst of the usually mischievous Lyraxian, edging back away towards the bar, some distance away.

Daedra struggled to move closer to the door, coming to one of the great set of six wooden pillars that helped hold the roof of the tavern’s structure in place. With great effort, she finally reached the square support, and leaned her back against it, facing her body towards the pair of onlookers.

Worryingly, the drunken woman could feel her stomach starting to undulate, the amount of alcohol she’d consumed now making her sick the more she stood on her feet despite her efforts to ignore and force it down. Her hair drooped over her face as she doubled over, but kept standing, resisting the urge to empty her bowels in the presence of others. A cold line of sweat rolled down her face as she lifted it, with one eye catching the unbelievably neutral stare of her black armored companion.

With an angry mumble, and staring back over at him, she utters, “What are you looking at, huh?”

She’s breathing hard still through her lips as if she’s just run a mile, and waits for a reply, but none ever comes. His eyes just stay fixed on her off in the distance.

“…Stop looking at me like that…” She whispers menacingly, her anger starting to crest again as the words come through clenched teeth.

Eliphas just stares, and nothing more, his refusal to comment and the noise it carries, deafening in the eerie calm he maintains.

“I said,” Daedra snarls out as her second eye comes open and locks onto his, her head still lowered and her hair sharp, concealing some of her face, “Stop looking at me like that!”She shouts over towards the bar.

“Like what?” Eliphas finally says at last, not skipping a beat from the girl’s final word.

There is a pause before Daedra replies, standing up straight again and rising to remove herself from the reassuring, solid form of the pillar at her back. She takes a pair of steps towards him, more sure of herself, fueled by anger and determination to maintain her stance and whatever pride she had left.

“Like you’re so much better than me!” she rages, “So PROUD! So NOBLE! So BRIGHT!” She roars over at him, Maribel closing her eyes and shuddering at her volume and tone, each description dripping with venom and harsh delivery.

“Look at you! You act so perfect and strong! You treat me like I’m nothing when really, it’s you who’s nothing, you fucking metal moron!

She was hurling insults now, at full charge and trying her best to get under Eliphas’ impassive skin. The poor girl was flooded with memories, painful and stinging so powerfully in her heart. The alcohol hadn't brought them up, but it had also failed to keep her past at bay. There was agony in there, fear, hatred, and more than anything, a feeling of inescapable truth. She was tapping into that now, everything that had ever befallen her in tragic, violent tides. She hated everyone, and she hated every thing at that moment as she stared into Eliphas’ eyes, and now, he dared look upon her and judge her for what she had become in life.

“I could have ground you into the mud with my foot, you disgusting thing. I could have crushed the life out of you like a pathetic worm writhing in the muck!” Her voice was rising and her ability to focus her words was increasing with her tirade, hot, dark passion giving her the will to articulate her loathing so that the target of her wrath could feel every syllable despite the effects of her drinks.

“I could have put your stupid tiny head in between my little fingers and popped you like the blood-sucking tick you are!”

Finally, Eliphas shakes his head and turns away, taking up his tankard and draining the sweet water into his mouth. He’s no longer completely neutral, and now Daedra sees he’s done tolerating her emotional berating.

This angers the Lyraxian even more. After all this truth and all her honesty, she still can’t seem to force him into action. She wants him to reply, to shout back at her, to defend himself like he always does. She wants to see more out of him, to feel his anger repay her for her own misdeeds, because no one else would, or could. Why isn’t he? Why? Why? Why?!

Daedra sighs and thinks silently to herself, “Come on, I know its in there… What’s it gonna take, huh, big boy?”

A horrid thought crawls its way into her mind then, something even she can’t help but find distasteful and cruel. She remembers before, back to when she first attacked Eliphas and his fellows, there was a human she’d killed, and in a particular way that she knows, if properly worded, has to get a reaction from him.

A dark smirk comes across her face as she chuckles lowering her head, looking back to the floor, deciding for sure that this is what she wants to do. It will all be over soon, she can feel it at last, she just needs to push him a little further, to the absolute edge of his admirable self-restraint.

She does feel guilty, about a lot of things, but particularly using Eliphas in this way, as not just an outlet, but a release. She was trying to get a good man to do a terrible thing for her own gain. He really is strong, and noble, and kind, and she hates more than anything the fact that by comparison, she is anything but.

Daedra raises her head and looks over to Eliphas with that fanged smirk, smiling darkly before saying, “I should have just eaten you, like the bite-sized meat bag you are… Just like your little friend during the battle. You humans, you’re all the same to me.”

This gets Eliphas’ eyes trained back onto Daedra, his cold stare now sharpened and full of intent, and she nearly sighs in relief that it does.

The horned Lyraxian takes a breath, raising her head and balling her hands into fists before bellowing over to the black warlord her ultimate act of betrayal, her eyes burning with passion, pupils dilated and fierce,

“I should have eaten you and shit you out with him like the rest of breakfast!”

And then it happened. The line had been crossed, and there was no going back.

Eliphas became thunder incarnate.

The great prince of Emoria slammed his gauntleted right fist into the bar with every ounce of his iron strength forced into the blow, smashing a huge crater into the hardened wood of the countertop, splintering the place beneath his strike. The crash of his assault echoes out into the tavern, even into the woods beyond, but its nothing compared to what accompanies the slam. His voice explodes from his lips, eyes wide with rage, no words finding a way into his release of fury, only a place of anger tapped into by Daedra's cold knife of cruelty and death.

In the mere instant it took Eliphas to cross the tavern floor and reach Daedra, his mind and body in a place of maddened wroth giving him unbelievable speed, a tiny smile cracked on one side of her lips, and tears welled up in her eyes. She could see just barely in that time, the razor-sharp edge of his knife clutched tightly in his fist, begging to taste the end of her life. She didn’t bring her fingers together to snap, nor did she attempt to draw a weapon. She didn’t even move as Eliphas came upon her in the span of a healthy heart’s beat.

Daedra just stood there and made no attempt to stop him from killing her.

There was the tiniest whisper of a tremble from Daedra’s lips as the muscles in her throat tensed, the Emorian’s razor-edged blade just barely touching the skin of her neck, a thin prick of blood specked from the tip, running free. Silence had fallen over the hall, over the entire building it seemed, as Eliphas hung over the girl with hatred, rising but restrained, flaring in his dark, earth-colored eyes. They were, after a fashion, quite pleasing to behold, Daedra reflected, the noble gaze of one who knew the difference between right and wrong, and what it often took to stay on the correct side of that moral line. She could see, more clearly than ever, that there was something inside the man, something strange in a way, like the reflection of a face in a shallow pool of water, that desired to be let free. A reflection of something, but of something that was real. Eliphas and his eyes would have been handsome at that moment, so close to her own shining iris’, but they were possibly now the last things she’d ever see.

The prince’s hand was unwavering, the knife pressed against his intended target’s lightly pulsating throat, the wrath and fury he had just moments before had felt, boiling in his mind, but for some unknown reason, he had halted. Absolutely still, the Emorian had not finished his final strike, and instead breathed carefully and slow to keep his emotions in check as he wrestled with his unsettled nature.

Daedra shuddered as she forced her voice to speak.

“…W-well?...” the words came after a long while, her own glowing orbs staring up into Eliphas’, almost imploring him to continue on.

“What are you waiting for…huh?” she managed as a tear ran down one side of her face, and then another from the opposite side, overcome it would seem with some inner tribulation that refused to leave her at peace.

The man didn’t speak, he only stared back with that hateful glare Daedra’s words had given birth too. He was practically prone over her, his left hand grasping her shoulder tightly, both of them on the cool wooden floor and holding up his body as his right clutched his knife and kept it pressed against her vital, thin skin.

“Go ahead,” she came once more, “its what you want isn’t it?” she whispered up to him as if it were a kind of forbidden truth no one besides the pair was permitted to hear.

The human felt his chest and heart begin to slow, the anger subsiding as clearer thoughts arrived to his mind. “No,” he thought inside quietly, “this wasn’t what he wanted, he had been forced to it.”

“Go ahead Eliphas, make me just another name on your armor… You’re the only one I’ve ever thought had the guts to do it. So just get it over with, already.”

He heard the words clearly, and as the prince of Emoria allowed them to pierce his subconscious, he arrived at an unforeseen dilemma, but they only worked to solidify his conclusion in the end and finalize what he now knew to be true.

The knife came away, slowly, and Eliphas closed his eyes sighing and raising his back slightly. Daedra blinked suddenly, and her breath caught in her lungs, confused and in utter disbelief, nearly stammering in response to him carefully backing away.

The man spoke as his eyes came open again, looking upon the horned woman with reserved sympathy, but guarding himself against whatever came next, no matter what it might be.

“The names,” he began quietly, not looking away, “that’s not who they are,” the Emorian finished with a straight comment, pausing a few moments before continuing.

“I don’t know why you are the way you are, Daedra, I don’t know what happened or where everything went wrong, but I’m not going to give you what you want, only because you desire it.”

He stood now, replacing his knife into his boot sheath as he got up and looked down at Daedra, still uncertain of how she would react.

“You want me to kill you, and release you from whatever has a hold of your conscience, well I won’t, you’re going to live with it. Whatever it is. I’m not going to give you the easy way out just because you think I’m worthy of doing so, or because you command me.”

Daedra was speechless as silence protracted between the two. Her eyes were wide and searching for some kind of spite or anger in Eliphas’ words or tone, but she could find none, and she wasn’t certain if that put her more, or less at ease.

“Get up.” He said simply down at her, as if a drillmaster were instructing one of the fresh inductees on the parade grounds of the great barracks he had been trained as a youth.

Daedra hesitated, still inebriated, still coming down from her recent brush with death and the slurry of emotions half-understood wafting around inside her head. This brief moment of weakness seemed to anger Eliphas once more, flipping his barely measured composure like a spinning coin in the air.

Eliphas looked down at her, sprawled and confused, looking almost defeated, several of her evening’s acts were completely unbecoming, whether due to the alcohol or to the situation, he, at last, didn’t care. He wasn’t going to watch someone like her wallow in their own self-doubt or weakness, it just wasn’t a part of who he was, it had been bred out of him by his harsh way of life and the culture of his people to tolerate such an immature response to being faced with one’s own deepest inadequacies.

“I said,” he growled as he reached down and seized her by the sparse bit of black clothing around her collar bone, his fist tightening around the material as her hands on reflex came to his gauntlet to try and resist the tugging of his arm.

“Get. Up.”

He forcefully hauled Daedra to her feet and she came to stand propped up by his armored forearm, unsteady, though growing more dignified at the act of standing, but still in slight unrest and feeling sick at the quick motion.

“I will forgive your outburst this once, but should you try something foolish like that again, EVER.”

The heavy warlord trailed off, glaring down at her, forcing his jaw hard set,

“I will not stop at just opening your disgusting throat.”

Eliphas released his hold on the girl, shoving his arm against her shoulder and emphasizing his threat as well as his point in one gesture of contempt, not letting her eyes wander as he kept them fixed within his stare. He was already a whole head taller than her, and in his bulky suit of spiked armor, nearly thrice her stature. He was imposing, powerful even, he exuded silent confidence and palpable intimidation with his mere presence alone. Daedra thought about shrinking him out of spite in that instant, to bring him down to size, to show him he wasn’t all that he appeared in truth, and was as fragile and worthless as any other human she’d met. The horned girl lost that thought though as something else came to her mind, she had been vulnerable just now, and that was something she not often found herself feeling openly. Everything was coming together all at once, and she was beginning to feel dizzy.

The woman, at last, closed her eyes and dipped her head, submitting to his scolding, forgetting everything about herself in the pursuit of erasing her past with heavy drinks of beer and spiced wine.

Eliphas didn’t expect her to apologize, or even take responsibility for her actions, but he did see that she was regretful of her choices, and as such, he took a momentary thought of pity for the horned inhuman creature. Though she was undoubtedly cruel, snide, manipulative, and a faithless heathen to boot, he could not force himself to hold it against her as much as he’d like. He was a kind soul at heart, as much as the rest of the world had tried over the years to beat it out of him. Eliphas had seen the worst of all horrors, but he had also been blessed in his travels to witness things of beauty and compassion.

Several seconds passed before the prince shook his head and sighed audibly again, speaking down to Daedra with her head dipped lowly, appearing as though ashamed.

“Look, let’s get you to-“

He was about to offer her aid to somewhere she could lie down, his good nature deciding to embrace Daedra’s hurtful outburst and mistreatment with understanding and nobility, but that all changed, as it seemed to normally, in the blink of an eye.

To Eliphas’ alarm, and complete surprise, acidic bile torrented from Daedra’s mouth as she convulsed and vomited down in his direction, the evening’s drinks returning to the outside world in a flash of unsightly liquid that rushed to the floor. The human reeled and felt the stream splash his boots, getting in between his armored plates and touching his undergarments and skin in a very uncomfortable wash. The girl fell to her knees in the same moment and held herself up with one hand on Eliphas’ thigh guard, coughing and choking as she shuddered in discomfort, saliva and more unsightly fluids remaining stuck to her lips in sticky strands.

Eliphas scowled and recoiled trying not to gag, keeping in range of Daedra’s hand out of impulse and keeping her from collapsing into her puddle of awful with his leg. His hands came up and his shock turned to disgust as he watched Daedra crane her neck up to look at him, her visage in complete misery as she spoke, eyes pleading with their glowing softness as he glared down at her with clenched teeth.

“S-sorry…”

+            +            +            +

Something was itchy, scratching along skin that was healthy and tight. Slumbering, feminine skin. There was warm light coming from outside and through small lines or holes in a ceiling that Daedra had not yet opened her eyes to see. Her hand came up and brushed whatever scraped against her cheek with a frustrated groan, but the act didn’t move the slightly pointed piece of straw, of the pile she now lay upon, away.

The shining yellow suns of her eyes revealed themselves slowly as their protective covers parted, the sunlight hurting them a bit as they did so.

Daedra sat up sluggishly, and in an instant, regretted doing so as quickly as she did, pain throbbing around her forehead, forcing her eyes closed once more and her palm pressing against her temple and forehead. The horned girl groaned in agony, the sunlight compounding the headache she was already feeling all too well.

Daedra was lying in the barn of the tavern, as she had originally planned to seek out by the end of the night, but she had no memory of getting there nor had she-

Her body froze, and her muscles refused to suddenly respond as she felt something else on her body. All the control of her form fled her command as her heart skipped a beat in her ribcage, as if trying at once to break itself free in eager anticipation.

Draped across her albeit crudely clothed, but elegant body, was at first what Daedra assumed was a blanket, something to keep her warm, probably provided by the kindhearted Maribel, but upon further inspection she realized was much more than that. The fabric was heavy, and colored the deep crimson of lightly dried blood, and it was shaped in such a way that it was intended to be worn around the neck at the shoulders, fastened to clasps near the collar.

The blanket was, in fact, Eliphas’ flowing cape and seemingly his symbol of rank.  The woman held the soft cloak in her hands and slowly rubbed her fingers together, the lush red material pleasing to her senses. It was of very fine quality, of which the likes she hadn’t seen in days since…Since she’d lived elsewhere.

Hesitation stopped her suddenly, and on complete impulse, Daedra cast her glowing stare around, looking to see if there was any other soul around to witness her next act of inappropriate measure directed to her captive.

Finding no one, the woman’s shining eyes returned to the cape, as she closed them slowly, and cautiously brought the red garment to her face and nose, inhaling softly as its plush fibers tickled her skin, drinking deep the scent it held tightly within.

Several moments passed as all feelings of her oppressive hangover, momentarily forgotten, subsided completely with the act, a deep sigh coming out of her gently parted lips almost in a moan when her sight returned reluctantly.

The cape, predictably, smelled just like Eliphas, but much more intense, as if she were right up against his body and her enhanced sense of smell didn’t have to contend with other sources due to him being normally so distant and far away.

It was absolutely intoxicating, so much so, that she felt herself shiver for a reason she couldn't understand.

+            +            +            +

Eliphas was easy to find, and only a few minutes after sneaking a whiff of his clothes, Daedra happened upon him out back near the store, sitting on a simple wooden stool with a large bucket of water near his feet. He was out of his armor, only the second time now Daedra had ever glimpsed him this way, and even then it had only been partially. His skin was close to the same shade as her own, strung tight and bound over musculature that was easy to find impressive. But where the surface of Daedra’s body was nearly entirely unblemished by injury or past events of open wounds, Eliphas’ in contrast was marred by scars and places where his body had been split apart and stitched back together.

In his hand was his knife, though at present the girl found she wasn’t nervous of that fact, he was using it to groom himself, a process she was somewhat currently captivated by as she approached and he spoke, breaking the silence.

“Good morning.” He said flatly, as if it were a statement, and not an actual greeting or form of pleasantry.

Daedra held his cape bumbled in her arms, and walked it over to a table near the storage building where the rest of his disassembled armor plating had been arranged.

“Thanks for the blanket,” she said as she walked her way back to stand near to his side, slightly behind his seated form, to get the best look at what he was doing.

The Emorian had spread the grease he’d obtained from the older merchant from the day before upon his scalp and had used it to shave with, his face was already free of the stubble that had been recently accruing there, as he next took up his knife to the hair on his head.

“You’re welcome.” He replied, seeming to purposefully leave no room for Daedra to continue to conversation.

She watched in silence for a time as the razor-sharp knife slid across the right side of his head, making a slight scratching noise as the path it left was devoid of all but his smoothed, bare skin.

His original styling, she could tell since meeting him, was a single strip of hair that was about as wide as balled her fist, slightly angled inwards near the place where his forehead began and met the hairline. It had been allowed to grow for a decent amount of time, as the long ponytail he wore ended near the center of his back, bound and interwoven in a simple, thick braid.

“Hmm,” the woman mused aloud, not specifically trying to elicit a response from her captive, but internally hoping it would,

“I like it. It suits you.” She said referring to his simple hairstyle and trying to sound as neutral as he had been.

Eliphas glanced at her for an instant before placing the knife into the pool of clouded water and washing the grease and pricks of stubble clean.

“Why were you so upset last night? It looked for a while as though you intended to drink yourself to death.” The man said, the question as sharp as his weapon. Daedra occasionally appreciated his curt demeanor, even though it clashed with her easy-going nature, though it was times like this when he completely engaged in formality that she could not help but find it irritating. 

She rolled her eyes despite him not looking and crossed her arms.

“It’s not something you should worry about. You should be more worried about how we’re going to starve for the next few days. You’re apparently useless to me, and everyone else, and without payment, I’m considering eating you in the meantime.”

A small, thin smile came to Eliphas’ face at her either casual threat, or playful attempt at humor, a reaction Daedra herself couldn’t keep from her lips.

“And how exactly can someone like yourself find it difficult to obtain food at a consistent rate? Can your magic not give you a distinct edge at most mundane tasks?”

The horned girl paced over to his front and plopped to the ground into a seated position, stretching her arms and yawning as she slid to lay on her back, upper limbs spread wide and knees together.

“Yes I can do things with magic, but I don’t want to draw any unwanted attention.”

The warlord grunted and shaved another line on the opposite side of his face, talking as the knife went.

“So you’re a criminal in this realm too then, eh?” He said looking to her and smirking.

Daedra’s eyes were closed as she basked in the mid-morning sun, the curves of her body nestled in the light green grass as it moved just barely in the breeze.

Eyesight cast in darkness, the girl dwelt on that statement for a bit before replying. Was that even true? There were things she’d done to break the laws of men, beast, and worse, surely, but was it really her fault? Was any of what was happening to her of her own doing? The last few years were a mess, that was evident enough, but a terrible course of events she didn’t fully take responsibility for.

“Something like that…”

Her lids parted and revealed her eyes staring over towards her human captive.

She changed the subject then, before things could get too close to what passed for her current inner peace.

“So, if the names on your armor aren’t weaklings you’ve killed, what are they?” She uttered without a tone that suggested she was joking.

With one final pass, Eliphas completed shaving the necessary parts of his scalp, rinsing the blade once more and feeling around for places or patches he might have missed. He spoke next with more than a disinterested tone, his mood lifted it seemed, as if suddenly prideful.

“They are the names of those who have worn the plate before me,” Eliphas said looking over to Daedra, a genuine smile brought out now, “My father’s name is there, as is my grandfather’s, as well as many others.”

The girl blinked and raised an eyebrow, intrigued again by this new crumb of information, another small glimpse into who Eliphas really was before his capture.

“There are the names of battles here and there as well, places of great struggle or glory. The armor is nearly five-hundred years old, kept in fine condition by the constant attention of some of our nation’s most talented artisans and smiths.”

He looked over now to the suit of discarded metal plates, placed in relative good order, though squeezed to fit onto the only table he could find and move outside before attending to his grooming.

“It gives me great honor to wear it, and one day, perhaps if I’m worthy, it will bear my name as well.”

Eliphas slid his knife into the sheath still near to his boot, patting his head with his removed tunic and drying his skull. Daedra looked up at him as he cracked his neck from side to side and exhaled deeply, asking as he sat, enamored by this small cultural tale he was weaving for her.

“What do you have to do to get your name on it?” she said in interest, as he stood now, taking a step to walk away. He grinned down to her as he muttered something dark, something that despite herself, sent her spine into a slight shiver.

His voice came out in a near whisper, his usual formal, measured tone laced with unsettling, restrained admiration, as if he were all at once excited and trying to contain it, but also needed to share its secrets.

“You have to die in it,” he said down to her with a grin.

The rain had been falling now for nearly a half-hour, muted grey tones in the sky and angry black clouds wafted about in a thick overcast. A storm front had come through the day previously, and now a full-on downpour had begun, though when Daedra and her warlord in tow had set out in the morning, it had been a light sprinkle by comparison. Eliphas, drenched in his armor, seemed largely unaffected, trudging along ahead of the girl even though she had been the one to plot their next destination and in reality should be leading the duo.

The pair of them were both soaked, and Daedra was shivering in her sparse coverings, inwardly cursing the weather, and irritated that the hulking human was handling the hardship with much less discomfort than she apparently was. As she tried to think warmer, more full-bellied thoughts, rain pinked and lightly clanged off Eliphas’ war plate without pause, creating almost an inconsistent chorus of barely strung notes as they went along. Eliphas’ body was shining with the slick cover of water upon his metal skin, the individual decorations of gold and bits of bronze and silver glistened now in a way they had not previously before.

The prince’s boots began making sucking noises as they met softer ground suddenly, the road is relatively hardened by use, but some spaces still less so, mostly sunken portions of the path where water collected.

Eliphas paused when this happened, coming to a halt. Silently he smiled and closed his eyes, his head tilting back as he basked in the cool drops impacting upon his face and skin, the rain keeping him pleasantly cooled by along with the early hours’ air. Moving in his heavy battle-plate normally caused him to heat up immensely, but the crisp, early morning downpour had kept his internal temperature quite comfortable indeed. A rumble of thunder echoed all around and while there was no accompanying flash of lightning just yet, the center of the storm could not be far away.

Daedra arrived next to him, arms across her chest and her torso slightly arched over, trying to retain any amount of her body heat as she glared up to him, rain covering her normally healthy-looking skin.

The prince heard her approach and opened his eyes to address her when she neared.

“Are you not from a cold place, Daedra?” Eliphas said with a smirk down to her, more than just a little content with the situation.

The girl frowned and tried to stop shivering as she replied, clearly agitated by his snarky teasing.

“N-no. I’m from somewhere hot. It usually doesn’t rain much here, which is why I l-like it.”

“Liked,” would have currently been a more accurate term.

Eliphas reached up with his right hand and glanced to the clasp affixing his cape to his armored shoulder, pulling it from the loop and making to remove it completely as he went.

Daedra cut in though as he had finished undoing one of the sides.

“I don’t n-need your stupid cape, or your pity, human,” she said with her eyes narrowed and teeth clenched, though whether from the cold or her outward frustration, it was unclear.

“And yet,” Eliphas said taking off his red garment and placing it around Daedra, who, despite what she had said a moment before, tried not to look eager to accept it, “you will receive it.”

 The prince tugged the sides together and took Daedra’s hands without thinking, her face’s muscles going soft for a moment in surprise, though she did not rebel as she assumed her body usually would at the act of being touched without consent. He placed her fingers around the material and pulled them together tight, holding the cape in place and completely covering her from neck to toe in a red shroud. She could just barely sense the scent of her human companion on the fabric, and it gave her a momentary, lush feeling in her chest at being reminded of what he smelled like. It was, also, extremely warm, a fact she became very much thankful for given the weather.

The two exchanged a quick glance, Daedra, a bit anxious, and Eliphas calm and at ease.

He turned in the next moment and continued to walk, as if nothing of import had transpired at all, though his act of kindness had a profound effect on his captor, who blushed as soon as he made to walk away.

“Perhaps we should wait a while until the weather clears,” the prince said over his shoulder, but not looking over at Daedra, “if you would permit it, of course,” he finished with a tiny smile and now looking to his female traveling partner for confirmation.

Daedra frowned over to him and walked on, shouldering into him intentionally as she went passed.

“No, we keep going, the quicker I get home, the quicker I can make you into stew.”

“You always refer to me as food,” Eliphas said as he moved to join her pace, “I do serve other functions as well, you are aware. I do have other talents.”

“Yeah, well, without Graggas to pay me for your skills and talents,” she said with mockery, “I don’t have another use for you.”

“Why is it you need to resort to thievery and other nonsense, anyhow? You clearly have talents for magical arts, you’re also not terrible with those daggers, and you seem at least somewhat intelligent.”

Daedra glanced over to the warlord as he continued on, though she was suddenly nervous at the topic of this conversation, as she was assuming where it was once again heading.

“I asked you before and you wouldn’t say, what is it that keeps you from rampaging throughout these lands as you did my own? Taking what you require and making yourself rich all at the same time?”

Daedra scoffed and shook her head, feeling a rock poke the sole of one of her feet as she squished along through more mud.

“I have to travel far for resources because it’s like I told you, it’s not safe around here these days.”

Eliphas raised an eyebrow at this, despite having been ambushed by a trio of highwaymen, this place he found himself stolen away too with his captor seemed relatively peaceful. He considered for a moment that he was even beginning to like it.

“Bandits don’t seem to faze you much, so what are you actually referring to?”

The horned girl shook her head and rolled her eyes, he was persistent, this human warlord Eliphas.

“I’m not a fugitive, alright.” She began with, before correcting, “Well, I am, but that’s not why it’s dangerous out here. There are… I mean…” She paused, trying to pick her words carefully.

“It’s like the ocean out here, there are lots of monsters and huge creatures that dwell beneath the waves but there’s always one larger or more terrifying.”

“Ah, I see,” Eliphas replied, taking his queue to speak, “So you’re akin to a minnow or a shrimp, as I am a shark or perhaps a proud zypast.” The man said balling a fist and raising it to his chest.

Daedra, glancing up over to her prisoner, blinked and said with curiosity over to him, momentarily forgetting the downpour.

“A…Zypast?”

Eliphas looked over to Daedra and saw the confusion on her face that he had picked up on in her voice, next taking the opportunity to explain.

“Ah yes, right. A zypast is a sea serpent, long-snouted, as long as some trees and as round as the same. Elusive, but cunning predators. Often when hunting alone as they typically do, they kill their prey in a single, lightning-fast strike. They’re native to the eastern waters of the Empire’s coastline.”

Daedra listened intently, the discomfort at being cold and wet now fading as they spoke of something new and interesting for once, instead of taking personal stabs at one another. She genuinely enjoyed learning about new things, places, peoples, and folktales, and Eliphas was clearly well educated based on how skilled he was at articulating his thoughts into words.

“House Favillo took the zypast as their family crest centuries ago. They’re a seafaring bunch, skilled at sailing and fishing. When they fought a rival band of pirates in their earliest years as a people, the turning point of their struggle was decided during the creatures’ mating season, when their waters were filled to the shore with the things. Legend says one of the serpents aided Pythas, first warrior lord of the Favillo, in killing the pirate king during the final battle.”

“What color are they?” Daedra said aloud, her thoughts coming out innocently and pure.

“What color are who?” Eliphas replied, he himself engrossed in the tale he was recounting and surprised to hear the girl speak so candidly.

“The zypast, the serpents, what color are they?”

Eliphas smiled as he walked, speaking more at ease and enjoying the conversation now.

“They are a deep turquoise,” he began, but noticed a tinge of unfamiliarity in Deadra’s eyes as he said the word, “They are the color of the sea just after sundown. A dark bluish-green. They have underbellies a shade like dirty chicken eggs, not quite a pure white.”

The horned inhuman licked her lips as she looked ahead, saying without a hint of humor,

“I wonder what they taste like…How sweet their blood must be…”

“Do you think of everything in terms of food, Daedra?” The man said with a sigh and flattened demeanor.

She frowned and looked as if though she were about to pout in that next moment.

“I’m just hungry, ok!” She blurted, but knowing full well that tasting the blood of different creatures was actually something her culture took more seriously than most. It had a completely different purpose to the Lyraxian race, to ingest the blood of one’s prey, or in some cases…

“Blood is sacred to us,” a voice came from the tree line.

Immediately Eliphas had his guard up, his eyes darting up and fixing on the area the call had come from.

“It’s everything to us.”

A figure appeared through the dense woods, walking casually forwards and into the open area where the road closely began. The source of the voice was female, and she brought in tow with her, a group of many others.

“Blood spilt… drank…. or shed.” The woman continued, slow malice in her tone. “It is, everything to us.”

Daedra, unfortunately, knew exactly who it was before her eyes confirmed her worries. The newcomer now standing in the open, bore some resemblance to Daedra, her hair was a different color, and her age was by comparisons a few years older, but the horns she sported were of a similar type to Eliphas’ captor, with a subtle uniqueness to them that set them apart as individuals.

“Good morning, my lord. So nice to see you again, finally.” The woman said to Daedra, dripping with mockery as it came from her lips.

The group behind the vocal female was similar to those who had attacked the pair on the road to the Moss Grove, a misfit band of bandits, perhaps nine or ten, with sparse coverings for protection and mismatched weapons and appearances. The group stood just behind her, weapons in their hands and looking as if ready for a fight that was rapidly approaching.

There was, however, a member of the group who stood out from the rest, even from the woman who was addressing them.

A male Lyraxian, tall and slender, bedecked in what looked like layered forms of the strange leather armor Daedra’s own attire was fashioned, stood silent and neutral directly behind her, a helmet with a red topknot matted by the rainfall nestled in the crook of his arm. The headgear included odd gaps down the front, reminiscent of face or eye slits, but Eliphas soon concluded this was a design feature to allow the warrior to wear his protection despite having horns, though it left gaps in the protection that were larger than he would have thought acceptable.

Eliphas’ captor glared and frowned over to the group’s leader as she spoke over to them, only about two dozen meters from where they now stood in the road. The rain had dulled Daedra’s senses, and the exchange had nicely distracted the two until they had nearly run straight into this confrontation. She cursed that brief conversation of weakness with her human that brought her a small semblance of happiness, despite enjoying it.

“Eldegar, I would say it’s nice to see you too, but I always hated you.”

The opposite female, apparently Eldegar, laughed boisterously and tilted her head to one side, her hands coming to her chest, similarly dressed to the male Lyraxian in layered stripes of the superior leather, though without a helm to complete the outfit. The color and indeed the construction was more uniform and complete, as opposed to Daedra’s attire. The hostile pairs’ dressings were a muted, dark green which closely matched the shade of the accompanying trees, and covered most of their bodies, formed into chest protection, vambraces, and greaves. Garbed in black, and nearly half-naked, in contrast, Daedra seemed like some kind of renegade.

“Yes, yes, that’s why I’m so, absolutely delighted, I was given the task of finding you and bringing you back!”

The prince glanced at Daedra at this revelation, seeing as he did her nostrils flare and one corner of her mouth curl in a snarl that revealed her fanged canines.

Her glowing eyes were vibrant in the gloomy overcast, and as the man had seen across the way, the opposite inhuman figures had glowing eyes as well, though the female and what looked like her bodyguard had much more natural eye shades of green and blue respectively.

In this, it would seem, Daedra was again, unique.

“You can try, slave!” Came the proclamation from Eliphas’ side, punctuated by Daedra releasing her hold on the crimson cape she was loaned and whipping a pair of black daggers from her back in a swift motion.

It was only at this moment the prince himself was seemingly acknowledged, as if only now being noticed for the first time.

“Your friend there should just be about with his travels now, we wouldn’t want an innocent bystander to get hurt along with you, would we now?”

“Don’t you dar-“Daedra began in a whisper without looking over to Eliphas.

“Shut up. They wouldn’t let me leave even if I wanted to.” He replied sharply.

 There was a pause next within the human warlord’s mind, as a terrible thought came to the prince’s realization, considering all his current tactical options and already planning on who he would kill first.

“The other two, the ones like you,” he said in hushed reply, “can they change size like you?”

Daedra smiled in a dark, somewhat sadistic grin, her eyes lighting up even greater if such a thing were even possible, as if roused by the prospect of violence.

“No.”

Suddenly, however, before they could exchange another word, Eldegar reached for her hip and produced a small, red object, something akin to a coin.

“Let’s get on with it then!” she shouted with a huge, maniacal smile, her dark, long hair thrashing as she hurled whatever it was at Daedra underhanded, “I want to go home already and collect my reward!”

Whatever it was that the newcomer threw, it traveled at a much greater speed than it should have simply from being thrown. Eliphas could swear he heard it make an audible zip through the air as it contacted with his traveling companion’s chest, sending her back a few feet, sprawled into the mud as it struck her with a thud that sent her gasping and shrieking in pain as she landed. The girl lost hold of her daggers and clutched at the area above her heart, writing in the muck as she cried out in agony.

In the same moment, the group of mercenaries shouted their fighting chorus and as one, sprung forwards to begin their attack.

“Shit.” Eliphas muttered as he watched the woman thrash on the wet ground, turning to face the oncoming melee.

The first man was only half a dozen steps from him when Eliphas reached under the heads of his stolen axes, pulling them up and free from their rings. In a smooth, skillful motion, he rolled the heads around his fingers and swung the weapons up and into his hands, rotating the handles around into his palms.

Quickly, he hurled one of the weapons square into the chest of the closest assailant and began to rush forwards himself, energy surging into his muscles and his heart booming in a flood of battle rush.

Blood splattered out and the nomad he had struck fell backward into the grime and slushed dirt, dead outright, the sharpened axe head embedded in his heart, slicing straight through his light cloth and animal pelt attire with ease.

Eliphas was well trained, experienced, and better protected to be sure, but he was also outnumbered and slower, and swore aloud at Daedra for putting him to this situation as he killed another man he came to grips with an uppercut swing of his weapon.

By the time the second man’s jaw and face had been cleaved in two by Eliphas’ remaining axe, the group was on top of him. The prince of Emoria punched and cut in regimented strokes, sending blood spraying and screams sounding around his armored form as bones crunched and men died with each of his calculated, albeit desperately hastened strikes.

The prince felt rebounds of metal on metal as weapons impacted his black plate every passing moment, each strike turned away by the well-crafted suit of sacred metal and shielding the precious meat held within. It had served his family for nearly six generations, and he doubted now, of all times, he would see it defeated by some thuggish, forest tree-folk.

Fate, it would seem this past week, was having quite the humorous time of proving him wrong.

In that same instant, a great, bearded wild man shouted an unknowable phrase into Eliphas’ direction, likely a curse upon the prince’s mother or some other such appropriate insult, flecks of spittle flying from his opened mouth as he swung a type of large cleaver down overhanded, finding a blind spot in his armored foes’ defenses. The heavy short sword bit in between Eliphas’ shoulder guard and cuirass, parting the flesh and muscle along his side as it traveled down to his ribcage, a red hot burning sensation making the man growl in anger and sudden pain as he received the shallow cut to his body. The warlord raised his thick arm vambrace and blocked a subsequent attack that made his entire wrist and hand tingle with needle-like shots of pressure upon impact, his attacker earning himself a steel gauntlet to the eye in return that sent him screaming to the mud.

He could feel warm blood seeping from the new injury, coating his side in a wash of precious coppery liquid. It wasn’t too bad, from what he could tell without looking at it, anyways, but he would undoubtedly gain a new scar from the attack as a result.

The prince risked a glance at the other Lyraxians as they simply watched, Eldegar with apparent amusement and laughter, and her fellow motionless, in silent regard. He found it strange how their own demeanors were mirrored by Eliphas and Daedra, one easy-going and somewhat insane, the other, stoic and hardened by duty. An odd thing to take note of during the flurry of battle.

The Emorian paid for this momentary loss of focus as one of the blades swung by his attackers narrowly missed his unprotected face, forcing him to pull away and throwing him off balance and staggering to the ground onto his back, the remaining few mercenaries rushing in forwards for the kill to avenge their fallen comrades.

Eliphas grew angrier as he struggled to quickly rise, seeing one of the men raising a crude longsword overhead and preparing to make a strike that he knew he had few chances of blocking effectively without losing at least an arm. Rolling to the side would only put him in range of another assailant, and tumbling back wasn’t an option because of his sheer bulk.

This was it then. If the swing didn’t kill him, he had few options in recovering and surviving for much longer afterward.

This wasn’t right. This was not how things had been meant to be. He should have died outside of Vagresh Tellmoth, the final great siege of the ancient builders’ city-state, or on the killing fields outside of that unnamed mountain during his first campaign with his father, when their army’s entire flank had collapsed under the crushing assault of the beastmen of Chandra. A battle that brought their entire species to extinction upon its grizzly conclusion.

Such glories passed. Such immense measures of willpower, skill, and honor. Of endurance and martial prowess, and he was reduced to dying on a road in a skirmish? This would not earn him a place of pride or decency among his family. But then again, who was to know? Who was to care? Nothing would succeed of him or of his death other than blood and a body.

This was how it was going to end? In some unknown land, by some crazed fools’ wild, artless swing, his corpse left to rot in the mud as he spent his final moments angry at his own mistakes, his mind devoid of everything else but the frustration of not living up to his full potential?

All things considered, Eliphas thought, that was exactly how he always assumed it was going to go.

Blood sprayed over the prince’s face and torso though instead, however, a black dagger flashing by and smacking into the side of the man’s head, a mess of horrible fluids and pieces of pink, fleshy matter landing among other things upon his cheek.

Eliphas’ eyes shot over to Daedra, who was on one knee and struggling to rise, her skin looking pale, and one of her eyes shut tightly closed. She appeared as though she was in a great deal of pain, and as the prince surged to his feet to meet the last pair of attackers, he didn’t have time to acknowledge that she had easily just saved his life.

One of the remaining men who he was defending against was the one who’s face he’d ruined. His intention to keep fighting was admirable, but he only earned a subsequent blow that put him down for good. A slice of Eliphas’ axe sliced deep through his neck, sending a jet of crimson gushing out and mixing with the mud of the rainfall.

The last of the human wild men died as quickly as the rest, the prince’s weapon smacked into his gut, and as he cried and gurgled out, vomiting crimson, the prince rolled him forward, hacking down a final swing that severed his spine as Eliphas cut down deep into his back.

The mud was littered with dead men now, and though both Eliphas and Daedra we injured, they had survived the first part of the ambush.

The Emorian was panting and his lungs sucked in great gulps of oxygen to keep up with the demand of his body’s exertion. Eliphas straightened his shoulders and composed himself, wincing but standing up fully erect and keeping the other pair of Lyraxians in view as he took a moment to regain his focus. He slowly edged away and towards where his first axe had been thrown, retrieving it as he was vaguely aware Daedra had gotten unsteadily to her feet.

“Your skill is impressive,” said the male abhuman as he stepped forwards and came to within a few feet of Eliphas.

“But stand aside, we are charged with retrieving Daedra and returning her to her rightful place. I am sworn to aid Eldegar and see this task through to its end.”

Eliphas took in a deep breath as his chest heaved up. The human lord sized up this new foe, anticipating he would likely fall to him, and his female captor would be taken regardless of his decision. And though he did care, in a small amount anyways, for Daedra, he cared more that the war god would see him shrink from a worthy challenge and find him weak for doing so upon his arrival to the death realm.

If this man was anything like in strength and speed Daedra, things would be over soon, but Eliphas was a cocky bastard at heart, refusing to be cowed.

“Then it will result in your death, friend,” he said tall and defiant as the Lyraxian slid on his helmet.