20 — The Darkness

20 — The Darkness

We came up empty-handed. The mayor’s house held nothing of interest. No documents, no anything.

“Guess this means we’ll never know how the mayor ended up a demon, doesn’t it?” I said.

“It’s likely,” Lionel replied. “I will say, I felt my blade go through him much easier than the first demon.”

“Yeah, if they’d been at equal strength, we wouldn’t be talking right now,” Ketty said.

“Perhaps it has something to do with his mimicry.”

“Maybe. Let’s search the places where combat occurred and talk with the villagers again tomorrow,” I said. “If we can’t come up with anything by the afternoon, we’ll keep heading to Merratoni.”

“That seems wise.”

“I’ll keep watch,” Ketty offered.

“You and Lionel rest, sir,” Kefin said.

“We will. Wake me if anything happens,” I told them.

I cast Area Barrier on everyone, then found an empty guest room to nap in.

“I should probably contact Her Holiness about all this first.”

After doing so via arclink, I got in bed and closed my eyes, ready to get up at a moment’s notice. Thoughts of humans turning into demons made it pretty easy to stay in a state of constant wakefulness.

I awoke some time later.

“Something’s not right.”

Upon exiting the room, I found Lionel fast asleep.

“There’s no way he wouldn’t notice me right now.” I cast Recover on him. No effect. “Was it the spirit? A demon? Either way, I swear to god, if something kills me...”

I walked to the living room, where I found a mysterious light emanating from Estia’s room. Awesome. Fantastic. What could go wrong?

I sucked it up and opened the door.

“She’s...absorbing the darkness?”

Estia, lying in bed, was sucking in a glowing black mist, but it wasn’t miasma.

“It’s like she’s breathing it.”

This wasn’t good. No one would be awake to react if we were ambushed, so I called Forêt out of the hermit key. I was taking a gamble, but if she really was the Spirit of Dusk’s sister, then maybe she could do something. Or at least I hoped so.

“Do what you can,” I told her.

She brayed. I cast Purification as well as Area High Heal, and continued to do so as a safety measure as I watched Estia. Forêt started to glow like back at HQ, and for some reason, this time the light made her look downright radiant. Like a pegasus. The light took the shape of wings, and what looked like golden rings seemed to appear on each of her legs. Then, the effulgence went into Estia.

The glowing stopped, and just like that, Forêt began to leave through the hermit key again.

“I have no clue what just happened, but thanks.”

I had no idea what the light had done, but I cast Extra Heal and Purification on Forêt anyway before she went inside. I turned back to Estia. The aura had vanished and she was awake, or rather, the spirit was.

“You did well, calling my sister,” she said. “Had things gone on, the dark aura may have damaged Estia’s mind.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re awake. Was that the backfire from using your power? It looked like she was absorbing it. Breathing it.”

If that had been the result of the spirit losing control, then I guess you could call it divine retribution.

“It’s my fault. Her body has never experienced darkness of that degree before, and I pushed her. I overloaded us both.”

Her using her powers had certainly helped us out, but if Estia had gotten hurt because of it...well, she really had to reconsider her priorities.

“Okay, don’t do that again. Can I ask about the demons?”

“I’ll answer what I can.”

“Did you know there were two more of them in hiding?” I asked.

“What? There were more?”

I suppressed the urge to tell her that I had just said that and noted her reaction. Not even the Spirit of Dusk had noticed, unless Estia’s condition had dulled her senses.

“The mayor and a villager. They went right under even Forêt’s nose.”

“My sister failed to notice?” she said quietly. “If what you’re telling me is true, Luciel, then you need to rally the nations or else find a power to rival the demons, because the end is nigh. The empire has made the first move.”

“I think an explanation is nigh first.”

She clearly knew something I didn’t, and if she wanted me to go on a wild goose chase, then she needed to fill me in. And I needed to keep my cool—an impossible task in and of itself.

“Let me get this straight. You’re saying the empire is preparing for war?” I asked. “Or do you just mean their spies are on the move? And how do you know that this spells the end or whatever?”

“The empire...” The spirit gathered her thoughts. “The empire has been conducting research into harnessing the power of demons. But did you know that this only began as a product of their original research? At first, they were studying how to create heroes.”

“That’s news to me.”

Then this wasn’t just plain old human experimentation. They had been trying to turn them into artificial heroes, and now demons.

“However, don’t be fooled by the class name. What they wanted were not literal heroes, but human weapons.”

What was wrong with those people? Why did we always have to resort to war to get over our differences? Power wasn’t exempt from the flow of time. Even the strongest would one day turn to dust. Their efforts would have been better spent researching ways to be prosperous, and if they really wanted to fight that badly, there were plenty of labyrinths with heaps of monsters to choose from.

“And did they succeed?”

“It has been decades since I last heard that their hero-creating experiments failed; however, as I said, that research was carried on as what we’ve seen in this very village. If word gets out... Wait, did you defeat all of the demons?”

“That’s right,” I said. “The Sanctuary Circle spell I used stopped the ritual but destroyed any evidence in the process.” Much to my chagrin.

“Then this experiment will be deemed a failure. You just might have delayed the development of even more powerful creations by another few years.” Her eyes pierced me. “Time you will gravely need to gather your strength.”

“Excuse me?”

“Luciel,” she said firmly, “if survival is your goal, then gather the blessings.”

“I assume you mean both the spirits’ and the dragons’.”

“You assume correctly. Find the Spirit of Inferno and the Spirit of Gales. Receive their blessings. Then return to Fluna.”

With those last words, the spirit seemed to reach the limit of her energy and collapsed back onto the bed like a limp doll.

“Great. Perfect timing,” I muttered. I looked at Estia’s body. “Why is it always me?”

I quietly left the room. When I opened the door, Lionel was waiting outside, looking a little sick.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. My head is a little cloudy but it will not interfere with my duty.”

“That doesn’t sound okay to me. I’m going to check on the two outside.”

“I will join you.”

He forced himself off the floor with purpose, and I found myself unable to tell him no. We quickly spotted the two outside the house, but they seemed unsteady and out of sorts.

“Just in case,” I said, casting Recover on them with a long-range magic circle. When the spell went off, they reached for their weapons and looked our way. Lionel stood in between us with his fiery greatsword.

“Oh,” said Ketty. “Just Chief and Sir Lionel.”

“Scared the hell out of us,” Kefin said.

They both knelt on the ground.

“What happened?” I asked.

“A wave of darkness hit us from the house all of a sudden, and then everything went hazy,” Ketty explained. “Could barely tell who you were.”

“You came at us with a spell, so we thought you were an enemy,” Kefin added. “Thankfully, the fog in our heads was starting to fade.”

I could only reach the conclusion that the spirit could have made the whole town go insane if it had totally lost control. But the others came first for now.

“The paladins will be here in the morning,” I said. “We’ll be investigating until then. For now, you all need some sleep.”

Ketty and Kefin saluted, then went inside.

Lionel gave me a questioning look. “What did you learn?”

“That the empire’s definitely involved in all this. And that if we hadn’t been here to stop it, they’d be invading Shurule a lot sooner.”

“Where did you...” Lionel stopped himself. “No. You’re almost certainly correct. I swear to you, I will protect you with my life, sir.”

He seemed different somehow. It rubbed me the wrong way a little.

“I have full faith in you. But we’re still severely shorthanded, so we need to up our numbers.”

“It’s going to get busy, isn’t it?”

“It’s looking that way. And I’ll need you in top form, so stay sharp.”

“Yes, sir.”

The emotions behind his calm, warm expression were a mystery to me.

At some point, the sun began to rise. It was light enough to be able to see around the village now. Lionel and I were watching the quiet town in silence when Estia and the other two emerged from the house just before daybreak.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Estia.

“Well. Thank you,” she replied. It was Estia herself this time, not the spirit. Would she be okay to get back on the road again?

“You two?”

“Feline fine!” Ketty quipped.

“No problems here,” Kefin said.

“Great. We’ll eat, search the house one more time, look for the missing items, and question the villagers.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.

After breakfast, we turned up empty at the house again, but there were several eyewitnesses who had seen the demon mayor and villager speaking with strangers often. The paladins arrived in the middle of our investigation, where we handed it off to them and resumed our trip to Merratoni.

“Too bad it wasn’t the Valkyries,” Ketty said, grinning.

“Bad luck, huh?” Kefin added.

Why must they hurt me?

Lionel shot them both a hard look. “When will you two just get married already?”

At the bomb Lionel blurted out, my jaw dropped. The pair stopped grinning and went awkwardly stiff. And suddenly, their attention was on me.

“Why’s everyone looking at me? What, am I supposed to give you permission?” I asked.

“Won’t you allow them to be a family?” Lionel implored me.

“I mean, if that’s what they want, then of course.”

“With the emergence of the demons, I fear peaceful days will soon be in short supply for all of us.”

“I get that, but if you two are free and really do get married, I’ll still need you to stay with me.”

“Of course,” Ketty assured me.

“I still have a dream, and I need to be with you to achieve it,” Kefin insisted.

Lionel looked at them with a strange expression, then at me, and then he sighed.

“Likewise,” I said. “But my sigh’s of the relieved variety.”

It would be hard to replace them, and a few demons didn’t mean everything was going to go to the pits all at once. It would have been a real problem to have them leave when I needed them most, though.

“Thank you for your understanding,” Lionel said.

“Anyway, you just focus on your rematch with Brod. He’s gonna need your full attention, I bet.”

“I have taken your warning into consideration.”

It went without saying that the rest of the journey was exceedingly awkward. And it was all Lionel’s fault.