19 — The Stray Devil

19 — The Stray Devil

We turned over every stone where the demon and those under its control had been, but we found nothing hinting at the reason for its presence.

“My Sanctuary Circle didn’t destroy any traces of darkness or anything that could’ve helped us, did it?” I asked no one in particular. It was more stress-relieving griping than anything. The others only grinned at me.

Lionel shook his head. “It’s hard to say. That monster was enveloped in an exceptionally thick miasma, but after your attack, it vanished.” He held his hands up and shrugged exaggeratedly. “It’s not hard to believe that your holy magic may have utterly annihilated all traces of it.”

I regretted even bringing the topic up. I hadn’t actually seen the miasma myself.

“Whatever ritual it was trying to conduct, we knocked it out before it could finish, so we’re probably all right,” Ketty added casually. “Who knows if we’ll ever find out what really happened here, but that ain’t your fault.”

The fact that we might never know was entirely my fault.

“They’re right.” Kefin seemed to have read my mind. “We haven’t faced an enemy like that since the dragon. If you and Lionel hadn’t stepped in, we’d have been goners.”

Apparently, only one person here was on my side. The way he put it, though, sounded like the demon had been stronger than even Lionel.

“Kefin, you’re supposed to bully him, not make him feel better,” Ketty joked. She smirked, skillfully steering the discussion away from unsavory implications.

If the demon hadn’t been toying with them, they might very well have died. That fact resonated uncomfortably with me.

“Yeah, but maybe not in public. They’re awake,” he noted.

We looked at the villagers. Some of them were just starting to shake the grogginess from their heads.

“Sheathe your weapons,” I ordered. “We have no idea how they’re going to react.”

I cast Area Barrier once more, just in case anyone decided to try anything funny.

“How are you all feeling?” I asked them. I had to call out to them a few more times before they all came to. “My name is Luciel. I’m an S-rank healer. Can you understand me?”

A few more questions later and I eventually started to get through to them. Their minds gradually returned. The moment they processed who I was, they went horribly pale.

“Mister Luciel?!” one cried out. “When did you get here?”

“Hey, guys, Mister Luciel is here!”

“He’s with others!”

One shout roused another until they were all fully awake. And then for some reason, they were all prostrated before me. At least they remembered me.

“You can get off the ground,” I insisted. “I’ve barely been here an hour. We came running when we noticed something was off back at the gates, and we found you all being controlled by a demon. We defeated it and healed everyone, so you’re safe now. But I need to know what happened.”

One man stood up, came forward, and prostrated himself once more. I recognized him as the mayor.

“Our children are being held in my home,” he said. “A man calling himself a demon forced us to...”

“To do what?” I urged him.

“To perform a ritual...I think. Everything is...hazy after that.”

The mayor frowned and scrunched his face. It seemed genuine. Forêt could usually tell when someone was lying too.

“Does anyone know? Surely someone does.” No one spoke up. A demon strong enough to toy with my companions was probably entirely capable of hypnotizing all these people into forgetting. “Okay. Ketty, Kefin, take the mayor to his house and see if you can find the kids. If they’ve been turned into monsters, put them out of their misery.”

I watched them leave, thinking of how I might figure out this collective lapse in memory. It was a stroke of good fortune that everyone was still alive to answer my questions, and that we had chosen today to make for Merratoni.

“I know you all must be exhausted, but who knows anything about what happened before you were put under the demon’s control? Tell me everything you remember leading up to your children being taken hostage.”

I couldn’t see any other reason for a demon to be here, so someone had to have brought it intentionally. Despite my suspicions, however, no one’s testimony supported them. In fact, they contradicted the mayor’s own. No one had any recollection of a demon threatening anyone.

“Why is this so familiar?” I muttered.

And then it hit me. It was just like what had happened at the Kingdom of Dwarves with the Spirit of Dusk’s powers. Except in that case, everyone’s memories had been altered by the dark magic. Except for mine. Because I was resistant to it.

“Lionel, get to the house. Now.” He dashed off while I stayed behind. “Everyone else, stay put.”

I funneled magic through my hands and into the Illusion Staff, then set off Sanctuary Circle. Something exploded, and an entity darted towards the village gates. The thing tried to take to the skies, but Lionel brandished his greatsword and let loose a raging torrent of fire unlike anything I’d seen him unleash before, engulfing it and sending it back to the earth.

“He’s really got that thing figured out,” I remarked. “I had no idea his sword could even do that. Color me surprised.” I turned to the villagers and cast Sanctuary Circle again, this time on them. “To think there were more...”

Whatever the thing was, it looked like one of the townspeople, but it had been hurt by my Sanctuary Circle, so it was dangerous. I imbued the Holy Dragon spear with magic and hurled it at the threat.

The enemy landed back on the ground, swathed in black miasma, and as the dark aura dissipated, it revealed a horned, winged monster. A demon from straight out of a storybook. No sooner did I see its full form than my spear reached its target, piercing its chest. The beast shrieked, then stopped moving.

Some of the villagers screamed. Panic spread. I transformed my staff into Illusion Sword mode and dismembered the demon leaping at me as it doffed its disguise as one of the townsfolk. The sheer gruesomeness of the act stopped the screaming.

I surprised myself. I had no idea I could move like this. It was like I’d awakened to a sixth sense and reacted to the danger automatically.

“Answer me, demon,” I barked. “What are you doing trespassing in the Republic of Saint Shurule? And so close to her capital?”

The monster hacked blood as I cast Heal on his four limbs, regenerating them enough to keep him alive. Unlike the undead, it seemed that healing magic worked on these creatures.

“I may not be a paladin, but I won’t hesitate to eliminate threats like you if I need to.”

“Then do it. Kill me,” the demon spat.

“No fear for your own life?”

He cackled. “As if I have one with wounds like these.”

“Just so you know, I can rip that magic stone out of your chest long before you manage to overload and blow yourself up. So don’t try it. And so you aren’t operating under any false assumptions, I am fully capable of keeping you alive for as long as I need to.”

I cast Heal on his limbs again, stopping his bleeding.

“I have no qualms with your kind,” I said. “And I never intended to meddle in your affairs, even if our people will never be able to coexist. But there is no hero. You have no lord. There’s no war, so what’s the point of this meaningless conflict?”

“Says the man who slaughtered my kin.”

“Tell me what you would do if I invaded your home and brainwashed your people.” He said nothing. “Don’t talk to me about slaughter. I fight to protect, to defend myself against the dangers life throws my way. But you. You’re not a real demon, are you?” He was silent again. “Let me guess, you’ve come from one of the labs in Illumasia.”

The blood drained from his face.

“I’ll treat you fairly if you’ll—crap! Middle Heal! High Heal!” I chanted frantically. But my spells were in vain. “Why did he die? Was his life bound to some contract? Unless it was a curse of some kind.”

But any curse would have been nullified by Dispel earlier. Maybe the Spirit of Dusk would have more knowledge about the demons.

Whispers had started to stir up a quiet clamor when Lionel returned with a charred black corpse, Ketty and Kefin following behind with new wounds.

“There were more?” Lionel asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I rooted him out with Sanctuary Circle and took him down with a surprise attack. Did you learn anything?”

I cast High Heal on them and cured their ailments as Lionel answered, “No, but the children were safe. It seemed like they were about to be transported somewhere.”

“Noted. We’ll figure it out later.”

“Yes, sir.”

I turned to the townspeople and looked out over each of their faces.

“The demons are gone. You can all return to your homes,” I told them. “I’ll be staying in the mayor’s residence today, so come to me if you need anything.”

There was no point in grilling them about things they couldn’t remember, and at worst it would make them distrust me. Setting up in the mayor’s house didn’t feel like a good thing to do either, but some of the villagers had been my past patients, so they would at least be willing to talk with me.

Before anything else, though, we made sure the children got back to their parents.

I turned on the lights in the mayor’s house, confirmed that there were no other children inside, then finally let the tension out of my shoulders.

“So what was that about?” I asked. There had been combat, sure, but they had been in horrible shape.

“Guy got the drop on us while we were leading him here,” Ketty answered.

“And he got us good,” Kefin added. “If the light you shot off hadn’t hurt him, we would have been done for.”

“I found the disguised demon as he was attacking and countered from behind,” Lionel said.

“Which was a great help and all, but then the house exploded,” said Ketty.

“Playing firefighter was new. Particularly the part where the roof got blown off,” Kefin remarked.

“Oh, yeah!” I exclaimed. “I thought Lionel was putting out some crazy firepower.”

“One of the knights took an interest in my weapon and taught me some things,” Lionel clarified.

“I’m impressed you got them to like you that much.”

It was safe to assume that the “disguised demon” had been the mayor. He must have been shaking in his boots in Lionel’s presence that whole time.

“He showed me courtesy for being with you, sir. The man restoring the Church to its former glory. Or so he said. He seemed awfully happy about it.”

“Who, me? I’m just a coward with good luck. Correction: a hungry coward. Let’s have dinner.”

Before getting to that, I lay down Estia, who was still unconscious, in the mayor’s bedroom. Forêt Noire had finally gone back inside the hermit key. And lastly, I woke up the men we’d tied up, made them pledge to stay on their best behavior, and released them once I was sure they weren’t demons.

I cleaned the table with Purification, then laid out the food.

“When we’re done, we’ll clean up the place and do some investigating.”

Everyone agreed, and then we filled our bellies.

We got to work straight after dinner.

“Did either of you notice anything during your first fight?” I asked Ketty and Kefin.

“Well,” Ketty replied, “he had this fancy staff and an ominous urn.”

A staff and an urn. For the ritual? What kind of ritual had it been?

“I don’t remember seeing any of that.”

“They, along with the magic circle, disappeared when you cast your spell,” Lionel said.

“There was a magic circle?”

It must have disappeared in response to the holy magic. In which case, I had destroyed some important evidence. But I hadn’t had a choice. All I could do was let it go.

“We had no luck before, but shall we try again tomorrow morning?”

Lionel’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

“Yeah. Anything else?”

“The mayor, or rather, the demon disguised as him, intrigues me,” he said. “No one suspected him for a second. I presume there may have been some advanced mimicry in play.”

“I agree. No one’s ever fooled Forêt before,” I said. “A simple disguise would never have gotten past her. Whatever he was doing, it must have affected the senses, like her smell, maybe.”

“Definitely,” Ketty agreed. “Kefin and I have sharp noses, but we didn’t catch a whiff.”

Forêt—who was very possibly a spirit—hadn’t noticed. Two beastpeople hadn’t noticed. What was going on here?

“Three demons,” Lionel mused. “It doesn’t make sense. That’s simply overkill if all they wanted was to overrun a single village.”

“I’d bet money the empire has something to do with it,” I said.

Lionel stared at me, surprised, with a muted hint of something else I couldn’t make out.

“Do you know something?” he asked.

“I remember how you and Ketty were investigating demons in Illumasia, and when I asked the demon if he’d come from their laboratories, he up and died. He was hexed for sure.” Hexed by something nasty that not even Dispel could remove.

“It can’t be,” Lionel growled. He frowned, frustration and disappointment mounting. In that moment, he wasn’t a warrior, simply a man disillusioned with his own country. “They wouldn’t resort to creating demons.”

It was in moments like these that it helped to give someone a bit of a light at the end of the tunnel. A little hope to cling to. Someone had taught me that once.

“Hard to say. But at this rate, we’ll really need to start considering protection a little more seriously,” I said.

“Do you mean to create your own private cohort?” Kefin asked excitedly. He had taken the bait.

“There’s the Order of Healing, but they technically belong to the Church,” I continued. “A unit I could operate more independently might be good. Especially considering we might have to go to the empire at some point.”

“You really plan to?” Lionel asked. Knowing me, he was genuinely and rightfully surprised. But if demons were wandering around outside Illumasia, then being in Illumasia wasn’t really much more dangerous than the alternative. And there was something I needed them to fix.

“Whatever’s keeping you and Ketty as my slaves is there, as are a mess of other complicated matters that’ll eventually need addressing, and I’d much rather have my friends and companions not be enslaved.”

“Fair enough, I suppose. But with our current schedule, considering our traveling between Merratoni, Rockford, and Neldahl, it may leave you with little time for romance.” Lionel gave me a teasing grin.

“I fail to see how that’s relevant!”

“He’s just worried about you,” Ketty said. “Y’know, polygamy’s legal in Shurule. I sure ain’t never heard of any guy getting cold feet around here, so you really should just pounce on Lumina while you can.”

Yeah, pounce, sure. Very catlike. Hilarious.

“She’s right,” Kefin agreed. “You might not get another chance.”

I didn’t like how fervently or how close he was to my face when he said that, so I decided to end the conversation.

“I got it, guys. I’m thinking about it. Discussion over. Now, I want people on guard tonight, because we could be ambushed.”

They saluted, and with that, we began our search of the house even though I was already more than a little worn out.