“It’s complicated,” Caera said. No translation for David. “But none of that matters. We need to get through the Grave Valley, and as much as we’d prefer to just not deal with obstacles, I guess that isn’t happening.”
“You thought you could simply walk through our province?”
“We thought,” Acelina said, “that I would be escorted to the spire, where I can find a new home with Azailia. These fools are helping me, so I am bound to help them. They should be allowed through the province unharmed.”
Laoko’s gentle smile faded. “Why?”
“Ask Azailia, after we’ve spoken with her.”
Why Acelina was determined to push boundaries and see how far she could piss everyone off, David wasn’t quite sure. An arrogance thing, a pride thing, something was making the woman lean into being even more pompous and annoying than usual. Yes, spire mothers were prized, but demons killed demons regularly. This was dangerous.
“I’ll let you keep your secrets,” Laoko said, voice going a little deeper, a little… sultrier? “But I would like to know a few things. Innocent things.”
Acelina scoffed. “Such as?”
“Such as the rider. He hasn’t been seen in many years, but now he’s here, as are you. Will he hunt us down? I’d prefer to know if an unstoppable killer who has terrorized demonkind for centuries will be an issue.”
“He will be,” David said. It was probably better to let Acelina do the talking, and she confirmed by looking back at him and exposing her shark teeth in a sneer. But his mouth moved on its own. “But, not just because of me. The rider is on the warpath. I don’t know why, but he’s out to get me, any other unmarked, and kill everyone in his way.” There. A nice, intimidating, foreboding warning.
“So why should we spare the unmarked? Why not give you to the rider?”
David gestured back toward Death’s Grip. “The rider didn’t create the canyon that ripped Death’s Grip in half. Something else did. And me and the other unmarked are the only ones who can stop that from happening again.” A white lie. Maybe not even a lie, if that thing underneath the canyon had something to do with why David was on this trip at all.
“Enough,” Acelina said. “We will explain the rest to Azailia.” A lie. “But no more. Rest assured, Laoko, killing the unmarked is a bad idea.”
“But the boy himself said he killed another.”
Shit. David put up his hands.
“Necessity. I didn’t want to. He forced my hand.”
Laoko nodded, set her eyes down, and watched the ground go by underneath them. Thinking mode. David did that all the time. Whoever this Laoko was, she had a head on her shoulders, and that could be a good or bad thing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ericia returned ten hours later, and she and a few other demons handed David a half dozen hearts. All human. She’d had to go far to get them.
“Thanks,” he said.
The demons reared their heads and snapped eyes between each other. Right, he said the cursed word that shalt not be said. Even Laoko looked back at him with a raised eyebrow.
“Unmarked.”
“Yeah?”
“No. I mean, you are unmarked. I can hear the… niceness… in your tone, and see it in your motions. You should be in Heaven.” She gestured up at the burning sky, half hidden by the gray fog. “You reek of empathy.”
“He does,” Jes said. “But it grows on you.”
David smiled at her, and handed her a heart. She returned the smile, took the heart, and split it between her and Dao. He gave one to Caera, and she smiled up at him and ate it. He gave one to the Las, and they split it and ate it, giggling. He gave one to Acelina, and she scoffed and ate it.
Two left for him. He ate them. The hunger in his guts settled, enough that he didn’t feel like he was turning inside out anymore, but holy shit, he was still starving. What the hell?
“Those were for you,” Ericia said, and she half hopped, half glided to him. “The fuck are you doing?”
“Sharing with the girls who’ve saved my life a half dozen times?”
“They can hunt food for themselves.”
“Not if they’re with me, protecting me from… you demons.” He nodded to the near forty demons following them. They’d traded their sneaky demon escort for a convoy of jailers.
“You’re safe with us,” Laoko said.
“I might be. Acelina might be. The rest of them? No, they’re not. I want the girls well fed in case they have to kill all of you.” He bit down on the last bit of a heart, and gave Laoko his best determined glare.
Laoko returned it with a gentle smile.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The White Lands. He didn’t need anyone to tell him. It was like someone had run over a million of the giant white tombstones and paved the ground with them. Hundreds stood before him, crumbled and broken, black dirt covered in their shattered remains. Ten times that were flat on their faces, cracked like glass, covering the ground in their shards. Maybe that was an exaggeration, damn fog blocking his vision, but considering the name and what he could see, yeap, that was a wasteland of destroyed tombstones.
No fences. No trees. No empty grave plots. Just a fucking load of tombstones big enough for gods, all broken.
“Any… souls out here to eat?” Caera asked. “Because it looks barren.”
“No souls. No demons,” Laoko said. “We cut through here and make good time to Timaeus. Three days, as I said.”
“But no food,” Jes said, hopping ahead a bit and climbing one of the half broken tombstones. “Good thing David fed us.”
“Indeed.” Again, the four-armed ten-foot demoness glanced back at David, and he squirmed on Caera’s back. She kept looking at him, analyzing him, and sneaking him subtle smiles. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think she was flirting with him, like some sorta succubus. He did know better. She was playing some sort of game, and happy not explaining the rules.
The bat girl Ericia, on the other hand, looked at David like she wanted to rip his head off.
“We’re not waiting for Teleius?” Acelina asked.
“No. I trust him. Our nest is a day toward the outer edge, and we will meet there when I return.” She shrugged and flicked some of her hair back over her shoulder. The dreadlocks bounced against her ass. “Come.” She stepped onto a flat tombstone, and her hooves made quiet click clack tippy taps on the white stone.
The group followed. Laoko’s demons spread out and circled the area, while Laoko herself stuck close to David and the group. Her other demons were in a constant state of tension and awareness, as if they’d have to fight at any moment, but Laoko just strut along, using the same sort of pompous, arrogant body language Acelina used, minus the pompous, arrogant words.
Time for a little reconnaissance.
“Caera, I think I can walk now.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Still hungry as fuck, but I can walk.”
“Alright.” She helped him off her back and take a few test steps.
Feet working, lungs working, he walked on his own, and slipped his fingers through Caera’s hair.
“Thanks for carrying me.”
“You weigh almost nothing.”
“Yeah, but, more than just that.”
She nudged her head into his chest and smiled. He gestured to himself with a thumb and nodded toward Laoko. She raised a brow, but shrugged and slowed down a bit and fell behind.
David jogged for a moment, joined Laoko, and walked on her right, opposite of Acelina.
“I’m confused,” he said. “You and Teleius work together?”
“We run this merry band of adventurers, yes.”
Merry band of adventurers? She wasn’t unfamiliar with expressions from the surface. Maybe she watched the scrying pools.
“And the two of you were investigating the hellquake?”
“That, and to potentially kill Zalia and her brood, or perhaps her allies, if we saw the opportunity. As we said, Vicus lied, and was taking you to them.”
“Across an area with no souls?”
“Yes, to avoid other demons. Hunting lands are never empty. Souls are dumped onto Hell in zones, and groups establish their nests near those zones. This is not the Scar. Here, we gather in groups and fight each other for the right to survive.”
“It’s not like that in the Scar?”
“Not exactly. The volas all work together and share the food, but engage in games of politics and backstabbing.”
“Synonyms.”
Laoko laughed. “Yes, I suppose a human would know best.”
Laoko didn’t talk like other demons. Even Caera had a certain brutality to her inflections and word choices, but Laoko spoke softly, and used words that landed softer. Mia might know better what that meant, but all he could tell was Laoko seemed smart, and dangerous.
“The other groups. They don’t like Timaeus?”
“Some groups are willing to bow to the bailiffs and to the spire ruler. Some are not so easily broken. Vicus’s friends and their allies tested the boundaries, and Timaeus has decided they should die.”
“Oh. So you were sent to kill them?”
“No. He declared them problematic. Whoever kills them earns favor. Or the troublemakers survive, and perhaps Azailia promotes their leader to be her new bailiff if they’ve earned the right through sheer might.”
Might makes right. Or in the wise words of green men: biggest ork is boss.
“I–”
Demons ahead froze, and those with wings flared them and climbed up half broken tombstones. The ones without drew their weapons, and snarled at the fog as they swung their blades into the gray beyond. The heavy thunk and fleshy splash told him what it was before David saw them.
More remnants.
They shrieked and screamed, and slowly pushed through the fog toward the group, some with arms out in front of them like classic zombies. Uh oh. Every demon near David, Laoko included, hissed and drew their weapons, and the ones with claws on their feet dug them into the white pebbles decorating the black ground. Every muscle tensed, and tails went rigid. Fangs were bared, and demons drew in closer to each other.
Remnants were borderline harmless to big demons, and even imps and grems had an easy time dealing with them usually. But demons feared zombies for some reason, and sure enough, the remnants came at them like a swarm of zombies. They groaned and moaned, some with jaws half ripped off, some missing an arm, or half their face, but that didn’t stop zombies. They tripped, fell over each other, broke limbs on the hard edges of fallen tombstones, but that didn’t stop them, either. They closed in on the group, by the tens, by the hundreds.
By the thousands.
Why couldn’t they just catch a fucking break?
“This again,” Laoko said. Snarling, she pointed her swords forward. “Go.”
Forward Laoko and the group marched, chopping down remnants like weeds.