Shrugging, Dao touched shoulders with his and gestured out around at the spiky fences they walked by.
“She says demons are probably hiding,” Caera said. “She’s right. I smell them, but they’re not making themselves known.”
“I figured demons would try and eat strangers.”
“Unlikely,” Acelina said. She stomped a hoof and gave her massive wings a few flaps. “Any demon that sees me will immediately know we are important and not to be trifled with.”
“Then… why haven’t any demons initiated contact, at least?”
“Scared we might eat them,” Caera said. “That is a problem with demons. We have a habit of getting into tussles and eating each other.”
“Cannibals.” His joke earned some small chuckles from the tiger lady. He loved the sound of her laughs. “But Alessio and Zel were on good terms, right? If any demons see us coming from Death’s Grip, wouldn’t they–”
The gargoyle shook her head and gave her wings a small flap.
“‘Good terms’ just means we don’t actively hunt and kill or eat each other. We’re not allies.”
Demons were assholes. And as awesome as Jes, Dao, Caera, and the rest of them were, they’d all killed plenty of demons and humans on the regular for food before meeting David. Did they prioritize not killing demons who didn’t deserve it? Was that something demons even considered? Dao had to, surely.
Remember, David. This is Hell. Different rules. Demons, from the moment they were born, were thrown into a pit where they had to fight each other for food, or literally eat each other. The only humans they ever met were horrible. They knew only the worst of… everything.
But that wasn’t entirely true. Jes had told him that story of the gremla in the hatching pit who’d fallen in love with a human man she’d been watching in the scrying pool. And when he’d died, the little lady had been so broken, she’d let herself get eaten. Demons weren’t mindless creatures addicted to violence and their hungers, and that meant communication was always a possibility. If they ran into any, he’d try.
And be ready to kill them the moment they didn’t reciprocate.
They stepped around another giant tombstone, and instead of continuing on, Caera sat down and rested against the slab of white stone.
“We need to find a place to sleep. I don’t know this country well, and finding a place to rest will be tough.”
“Tough?” He sat down with her, back to the tombstone. Daoka sat with him.
“I’m not seeing a place to sleep,” Jes said, squatting in front of them, wings gently flapping. “No hole or anything.”
“Maybe we can find a building,” Caera said. “There are church ruins around, but I haven’t seen any. And if we find some, we might have to fight for a place to sleep.”
David raised a hand. “We can’t sleep out in the open? Take shifts?”
“We just might have to.”
Everyone groaned, even the Las as they came back to walk with the group. No one liked the idea of sleeping out in the open, even in a group big enough to have people on watch without issue. Everyone, David included, had grown quite fond of cave walls to cover their backs.
Funny. Grave Valley looked almost nice compared to Death’s Grip, but the more they explored, the more obvious it’d be a greater challenge staying alive here than there.
“Maybe we should head more toward the inner coast?” David asked. “Maybe if we had the middle sea on our right, we’d have one less direction to worry about.”
Daoka shook her head and clicked at him before rubbing a horn into his shoulder.
“Dao’s right,” Jes said. “There are more demons on the shoreline, and plenty of hellbeasts. More than a few of them live in the Styx, too.”
“Styx?”
“Yeah, Styx, the river that circles the Forgotten Place.”
“I… thought it was more like an island in a sea.”
“It’s that, too.” Jes shrugged and sat down beside Daoka. “Lots of things from the surface kinda bleed down here through the scrying pools, so sometimes we pick up some names and they catch on, like the river Styx. And a lot of big, nasty hellbeasts swim in those waters, and attack the shores.”
“Hellbeasts. Bleh.” They hadn’t run into any hellbeasts for a bit, and he wanted to keep it that way.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the end, they found a place to rest. They didn’t find any buildings, but the ground had enough dips and rises that they found something with a short cliff edge and some big rocks. A far cry from Death’s Grip, but still, it was a wall of rock that gave them a dip in the ground to hide in. If there’d been trees, it would have been just like a forest, the kind David saw as a kid in Canada. The fog fit, too, the kind you found on a cold morning, except the burning sky above was dimming, not brightening.
Tombstones stood on their left and right, high and almost connecting with the little cliff they hid against. The closest thing to shelter they’d find tonight. The fog had grown heavier, almost to the point they could barely see fifty meters, and each breath felt wet.
“Can anything even smell us in this?” he asked.
“They’ll have trouble,” Caera said. “Now sit down and sleep. I’ll take first watch.”
“Hard to sleep knowing we’re vulnerable.”
“That is life,” Acelina said. “Even in the spire, every night was a risk. Many demons hung chains over openings to their rooms for warning, or strung bones together to do the same.” She’d sat down first, back to the rocks. The mound of rocks wasn’t tall enough to hide the tip of her horns, and she grumbled as she scooted down.
“Sound traps.”
“Yes.”
“Imps and grems not like that,” Lasca said, and she climbed onto David’s lap, facing away from him. “We trust each other. Sleep in big piles. Someone always watching to keep us safe.”
“There is a word, I believe,” Acelina said, “for surface creatures that gather and do nothing but eat and watch the world. Humans raise them for food.”
“Uh, farm animals?” David asked. “Sheep. Cows.”
“Yes, those creatures. We are being followed by cows.”
“I uh… don’t think imps and grems are really like cows.”
Daoka chirped as she giggled, sat between Acelina and David, and snuggled into his arm.
“Not cow!” Laara said, and she sat on Dao’s lap. “Cows not sexy. Laara sexy.” With a devious grin showing off her huge shark smile, she snuggled against Dao’s chest, but armor-on-armor made it difficult for the impa to enjoy the satyr’s breasts.