Chapter 1: Paying Heed to a Choice

Chapter 1:
Paying Heed to a Choice

 

“I’VE GIVEN A BIT OF THOUGHT to why you keep failing quests. You should be more than skilled enough, Mr. Loren, yet somehow the results don’t show it.”

They were in the same party, so surely Lapis was equally to blame—not that Loren would say that out loud. There was no way she didn’t already understand that. She was deliberately dancing around the subject.

Is she teasing, or is she trying to start something? Regardless, Loren continued staring at her without showing any reaction, and her hopeful expression gradually dimmed. Eventually, the glimmer in her eyes turned to disappointment.

“Umm, I don’t think you should blame a party’s failure on a single member…” said Claes, looking between the two, who seemed locked in a stalemate.

Lapis glared at him like a watchdog confronting an intruder. “I know that. I was fishing for a reaction, good grief.” She seemed a little angry, but not nearly as much as she was pretending to be.

When Loren nudged her to continue, she immediately shifted gears back to this brilliant idea of hers. “In short, you fail because you take quests.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You can’t fail if you don’t take any,” she proudly proclaimed.

“Are you drunk already?” Loren retorted coldly.

There was a clean sort of logic to it. The very act of accepting quests created the risk of failing them. In fact, it made perfect sense—excluding the fact that avoiding quests meant avoiding work. An adventurer lived solely on the earnings from their quests; following Lapis’s suggestion would mean cutting off Loren’s only stream of revenue.

Not that Loren’s quests were providing a satisfactory return. It was hard to say he was even making a living. When he admitted that to himself, a dark and heavy air fell over him.

“Umm, what part of that was a good idea? It sounds to me like you want him to quit being an adventurer,” Claes spoke in Loren’s stead, as it seemed Loren had lost the will to object.

Lapis must have realized she’d stepped on a landmine; she didn’t lash out at Claes as she answered. “Put simply, we’ll just have to take on a job that isn’t a quest.”

What is she talking about? Loren wondered, but Claes clapped his hands together in triumphant understanding. In fact, it seemed like Loren was the only one who couldn’t see where the conversation was headed. He didn’t care if it was the priest or the swordsman, he just hoped someone would explain.

Claes obliged. “I believe Ms. Lapis is suggesting going out into the fields and hunting monsters for their bounties. Is that right?”

“Yes, the skirt-chaser has it right.” Lapis’s insult was as casual as her nod.

Loren still looked doubtful, so she elaborated. Strictly speaking, bounty hunting wasn’t questing. No one in particular requested a party for the job, but the adventurers’ guild had a permanent arrangement. The guild would pay a set sum to adventurers who slew monsters and brought in the right bits and pieces of beastly corpses to prove it.

Notably, this sum was paid as a bonus on top of the normal rewards for monsters hunted in the midst of a quest. There were some adventurers like Loren who misunderstood, believing the quests and the bounties went hand in hand. But the fact of the matter was that the guild would exchange monster parts for money regardless of when or why they were offered up.

Hunting monsters benefited the public order. By insisting they play a part in the effort, the adventurers’ guild improved their public image. Most countries with guild chapters subsidized monster hunting to a degree, and most monster materials ultimately ended up with the guild. Loren and Lapis could expect to profit quite a bit through the sale of fiendish claws or fangs.

Overall, countries received protection at a low fee, civilians enjoyed a lower risk of monster attacks, adventurers still got paid when there were no quests, and the adventurers’ guild could boost both its funds and reputation. The system benefited all parties concerned.

“I suggest hunting monsters along the highway north of Kaffa,” Lapis concluded.

Monster encounter rates would be low on the actual highway. Instead, she suggested plotting a course parallel to it, a short distance off the path.

Still, thought Loren, if we follow the highway north, there’s a chance we won’t run into anything at all. If that happened, he would have no monster parts to exchange. No income. On top of that, it would take several days to cover the distance, and he would need to buy the necessary supplies.

There was no way Loren could ignore these expenses and risks—he simply didn’t have the money to spare. He looked at Lapis, quizzical, but she had an answer prepared.

“Even if we don’t run into anything, our end destination will be the Black Forest. There should be plenty of monsters there, so I doubt we’ll return completely empty-handed. Even if we somehow do come back with nothing to show for it, we’ll map out our route and report it to the guild. They’ll cover some of our costs for that alone.”

If they didn’t meet any monsters at all, that would mean they had stumbled upon a safe route through those dangerous lands. Information on this passage would prove quite valuable in itself, according to Lapis. Who exactly it would prove valuable to, she wouldn’t say. Loren had to wonder if the map would be sold to the sort of people who couldn’t exactly use the main roads.

“Whatever happens, you should be able to make some money,” Lapis said.

“As long as we don’t lose our bag of monster parts again.”

Seeing that Loren was intent on taking the conversation in a negative direction, Lapis and Claes both offered wry smiles. It was often said one should plan with the worst-case scenario in mind, but Loren was starting to feel his pessimism was almost pathological.

“It shouldn’t be too dangerous near the highway, so I think we’ll be fine,” offered Lapis.

“Even if it’s not an official job, the Adventurer’s Guild will still respect you for your contributions. I don’t think it’s a bad deal,” Claes said.

“Let me say this beforehand—I’m not asking for your cooperation. Mr. Loren and I will be fine on our own.” Lapis puffed herself up to better intimidate her target, not wanting to deal with Claes and his party of women for another second.

Claes easily conceded. “Yeah, I get that. I’m not gonna put a damper on your travels.” He went on, “I don’t know about you, but we’ve got money to spare. Go and enjoy your lovey-dovey trip to the Black Forest, why don’t you?”

Lapis’s cheeks reddened ever so slightly.

Pretending he didn’t see this, Loren asked, “What sort of place is the Black Forest?”

It took a moment of Claes looking up at the ceiling, sorting through his knowledge, before he replied. “It’s a decently sized forest two days’ walk north of Kaffa. The trees are so thick that it’s pitch-black all around if you head too far in—that’s why it’s called the Black Forest. The guild’s confirmed a large number of monsters living there, and there are rumors of elves and fairies as well.”

“Hmm. Elves, eh?” Loren asked.

That immediately brought to mind Nym, a member of a silver-rank adventurer party they’d once worked with. She was lanky and used a bow; she couldn’t possibly have been any more elvish. It was generally known that elves boasted beautiful faces, with ears long and pointed like dagger blades. They were also lightly built and constructed their settlements in the forests far from human habitation, where they had their own unique culture.

Honestly, the elvish community was rather insular, and it was quite rare to find an elf who chose to live in human society like Nym did.

“If you’re thinking of poking around for elves, I’d quit while you’re ahead,” Claes said. “They’re not citizens of the kingdom, so the kingdom’s laws don’t apply. They control the forests with their own set of rules. You’ll have hell to pay if they catch you trespassing. Sure, they’re beautiful, but it just ain’t worth it.”

Loren frowned. “I’m not you.”

Claes fell into yet another slump, cut to the bone by Loren’s words. Loren didn’t need anyone to lecture him about common sense—only the foolish and the shameless would go after an elf in the forest. Loren didn’t consider himself either.

“Just ignore the indiscriminate philanderer. How about it, Mr. Loren? I don’t think it’s a bad proposal,” Lapis said.

“Let’s see…”

Loren considered it. After a string of failures, it was only human nature to detest the thing he kept failing at. A change of pace was necessary, now and again. Put like that, taking it easy for a few days didn’t sound so bad, even if he couldn’t turn a profit.

On the other hand, that last quest—while terrible—had been something like successful. Loren didn’t think things were so dire that he needed to take a break. On the third, demonic hand, though, he didn’t want to compromise Lapis’s goodwill. That decided it. He pretended not to have any second thoughts at all.

“All right, got it,” he said. “Let’s give it a shot.”

“That settles it! Then I’ll need to buy food supplies, among other things.”

Lapis would leave the riddle of packing to Lapis. Some might say he was slacking off, but he didn’t have the money to scrape together supplies anyway. He was dependent on her wallet no matter what.

“Sorry about that,” he told her. “I’ll let you choose what we’re taking.”

“You’ll at least carry the bags, won’t you?” Lapis asked, and Loren immediately nodded.

If he couldn’t provide in money, he could at least offer his labor. Otherwise, he’d be totally reliant on her.

“Then let’s get shopping. It’s best to act while the motivation is still fresh.”

“I don’t want to walk when I’ve got alcohol in me, but…whatever.” Loren’s head was a bit foggy, but he stood and turned to Claes, who was still sulking. “Well, you heard the lady. We’ll be off now.”

“Yeah, take care.” Claes lifted his head just enough to see them off.

Lapis dragged Loren away into town, the picture of a settled, well-adjusted couple. Wrestling with just a little envy, Claes pressed his cup to his lips. Maybe one of my party members can console me, he thought absentmindedly, unaware that the cold in Lapis’s eyes would have dropped to absolute zero if she heard that.

 

After a day spent gathering the necessary supplies, Loren and Lapis set off from Kaffa the next morning. They were staring down several days on the road ahead, which meant quite a bit of food for quite a bit of silver. Ultimately, Lapis had to rent a donkey to carry it all.

On outings like this, it was common for adventurers to either rent a pack animal or hire a porter—a specialist at transporting goods. There were, of course, the rare exceptions, which usually came when a party had members to spare. Those lucky few distributed supplies amongst themselves, lessening the load on any one person. Lapis didn’t feel like taking on any new members to play pack mule, nor did she want to pay anyone to do so.

“It’s just the two of us, for once. I don’t feel like adding anyone else to the mix,” she said.

Loren couldn’t say if this was the right decision. But if this was what Lapis wanted, he respected her opinion. He took the donkey’s reins without argument.

With a bag on Loren’s back and the donkey hauling everything else, they were ready to set off. They left through Kaffa’s main gate and headed down the north road at a leisurely pace.

“We can release the donkey in case of emergency,” Lapis told him. “It’s apparently been trained to return to Kaffa on its own.”

If they were ambushed, protecting the donkey wouldn’t be high on their list of priorities. Loren was only worried that donkey vendors might take a “you break it, you buy it” approach to livestock.

“They don’t make you guarantee the return,” Lapis said, picking up on his concerns. “Either way, a dead donkey is far better than you holding the line and becoming a dead Loren.”

“So, you didn’t borrow a horse because it’ll be cheaper if the donkey croaks?”

“Well, horses do go for a pretty penny.”

The warhorses used by soldiers were incredibly rare, but even normal horses were expensive. A sturdy pony wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but Lapis had balked at the price tag.

“Considering speed and stamina, a horse would’ve been a bit better,” she conceded.

“The guild must have deep pockets.”

On a past quest, the adventurers’ guild had casually arranged for horse-drawn wagons to carry everyone on the mission. Loren hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. Now that they were haggling for themselves, though, he was reminded of the power the organization boasted.

“I heard it was two days each way,” he said. “Are we camping out along the way?”

There were tents and sleeping bags on the donkey’s back. Loren didn’t know what to think about a man and a woman camping out alone together. In his short stint as an adventurer, he had sort of picked up that adventurers didn’t put much stock in that sort of concern.

Claes wasn’t the first he’d seen to nonchalantly form a party with one man and many women, sleeping all piled up in the same tent. By now, Loren knew various takes on the matter: there weren’t enough tents for everyone; an adventurer could turn the tables on whoever tried to assault them; some people looked forward to their tent-fellows getting handsy. Loren wondered which view Lapis agreed with.

“Oh? You wanted to camp out with me, Mr. Loren? In that case, maybe I should have packed just the one tent. Or just the one sleeping bag?”

Tearing his eyes from Lapis’s complacent smile, Loren glanced at the back of the donkey. Lapis liked her space and her own tent. As long as nothing went wrong, they wouldn’t have to worry about…situations.

“I don’t want to die yet,” Loren said, earnest as anything, as he returned his gaze to the girl walking beside him.

Lapis puffed up her cheeks, discontented, and prodded an elbow into his side. “What does camping together have to do with a matter of life and death?”

“No, I mean, if I tried anything indecent, you’d definitely twist my head right off.”

Lapis’s slender arms didn’t look particularly toned, but Loren knew they contained strength unimaginable. After all, Lapis was a demon whose limbs and eyes had been snatched away to seal that very power. Loren was always impressed by how functional her demon-made prosthetics turned out to be—he had seen her snap goblin necks barehanded.

It was possible that Lapis was so strong precisely because she was using artificial limbs, but she was also fixated on recovering her various parts. It was hard to imagine that her real body didn’t outclass her current equipment.

And, during their last quest, Lapis had regained her left arm. Loren was understandably wary of it.

“That depends on who’s doing indecent things. Please, don’t make it sound like I would just twist anyone’s head off.”

“Then you’re fine with me?” Loren asked.

“Wow, that was…pretty straightforward. Even I would, umm…rather have a conversation and some preparations, so…” Lapis’s face reddened as she fidgeted and rubbed her fingers together.

Lapis often teased and joked around; Loren was surprised by this new reaction when he poked her right back. Feeling a bit like he’d cracked some very difficult code, he gave her a light nudge on the back. She carried on mumbling under her breath.

It took a bit before Lapis’s mind clawed its way free from the labyrinthian maze of her imagination and whatnot. “There are rest towns along the way,” she said at last. “We should be fine staying in the inns.”

The northern road was regularly maintained, with rest towns dotted along it, only as far from each other as an average person could walk in a day. Naturally, there was also a stop near the Black Forest, about two days away. Lapis intended to use it as a base of operations for their hunts.

“I’ll put up with tents when it’s unavoidable,” Lapis continued, “but I’d rather not camp if we don’t have to. I do like to sleep in a proper bed.”

Loren shrugged. “I don’t care either way. It wasn’t too rare for us mercenaries to sleep in a huddle on the bare soil.”

“That sounds like you’d be covered in sweat and grime by morning…” Lapis said, sounding rather put off. She was, in fact, correct. Loren had experienced that sweat and grime a good deal over the years, so he could only shrug at her again.

On the battlefield, Loren had been grateful to get any sleep at all. Oftentimes, even getting to sit down or shut his eyes had been an unthinkable luxury. Not that there was any point in telling Lapis this.

Even when he was covered in sweat and grime, a mercenary rarely got a chance to wash it off. Dirt was the least of his worries when he could find himself covered in blood splatter and trodden mud. Even then, he would sleep standing up and filthy if he got the chance.

“The humans are a strange set of creatures. They call themselves civilized, yet they’re perfectly fine flopping into bed without showering, and they don’t even build baths in their houses. What part of that is civilized?”

“Baths?” Loren repeated. “In houses?”

He knew the word bath, of course, and he knew what it meant: baths were, hypothetically, places where a large sort of tub was filled with a staggering amount of water, and then people sat around in it. Loren had never experienced this himself.

It was difficult enough to draw so much water. And he’d heard it was all heated. Just how much time, money, and magic would that take? All that just to get rid of a bit of dirt—it sounded terribly inefficient.

If cleaning was all a bath offered, a great big bucket took up far more space than it was worth. There was no way any standard household would be so wasteful. As far as Loren knew, they were only built in the palaces and estates of the upper crust.

He’d heard about regions where hot water welled up from the earth itself, where locals made a business out of natural baths, but Loren had never been to such a far-flung place.

“They generally have baths in demon houses, you know,” Lapis told him. “They’re so lovely, and I can’t imagine why they never caught on with the humans. It’s a mystery!”

“If you want to clean yourself off, a wet cloth is good enough.”

That was normal. Sure, winters made the water so unbearably cold that it had to be heated. Even then, a single pail of water was more than sufficient. There was no need to have enough water to drown in.

“Baths aren’t meant to be functional,” Lapis insisted. “They’re more like an emotional journey. You’ll understand if you try it.”

“Is that how it works?” Loren asked, just humoring her now. He doubted the day would ever come for him to take a bath.

“I’ll make sure our next quest takes us somewhere with baths. You must learn how wonderful they can be.”

“You’re not really convincing me,” he confessed.

The conversation kept up as they meandered down a path parallel to the highway. They didn’t run into any of the monsters they were looking for. So far, the travel plan just ate up time on their way to the forest. Some other adventurers must have had similar ideas. Maybe parties like theirs set out at regular intervals, maintaining the safety of the whole region. Inconvenient.

“It’s not all bad,” Lapis said. “Now the travelers can use the roads with some peace of mind.”

“Yeah, but without anything to hunt, it feels like my wallet’s even lighter than usual.”

“We might not turn a huge profit, but we won’t suffer a loss,” Lapis insisted. “Don’t worry.”

Unfortunately, the situation looked even more dubious around sunset. The sky tinted red, and the curtain of darkness was soon to fall. Given the encroaching twilight and the distance they’d covered, Lapis said they were sure to reach the next town soon. They were peeling their eyes for it when they saw—something.

Lapis paused. “Is that it? How should I put it…? I’m getting a strange feeling about this.”

She hardly had to spell it out. At the end of the highway, where there were no hills or trees to block their view, there was one spot that remained red as the darkness fell, as if the remnants of sunset had taken up permanent residence. Black pillars stretched up toward the sky, birthed from that bright point directly on the road.

It was pretty easy for Loren to figure out what was happening at their destination. “Well, I’d say that’s on fire.”

“Oh good, it wasn’t just me, then.”

The sky turned from blue to red, from red to black, and still the ember glow remained on the horizon. This absolutely reeked of trouble.

“You might not be getting that bed of yours today,” Loren said.

“I suppose that’s life.”

Lapis looked so heartbroken that Loren had to wonder if she was actually that torn up about it.

Standing and watching accomplished nothing. Regardless of what was happening ahead, they couldn’t turn back. Before either could lose their nerve, they set off toward the blazing red light.

 

All that awaited them was fire and ash. What had presumably been a proper rest town not too long ago was collapsing as the fire engulfed it. Flames bloomed, and the buildings let out thunderous rumbles.

The heat of the fire wafted the thick black smoke into the sky. The entire place smelled of burning—and worse. A nauseating stench clung to the once-human silhouettes that decorated the burning houses.

“Now this is quite…”

Lapis looked shocked as she inspected the corpse at her feet. Had it been a resident of the town? It belonged to a middle-aged man, his expression of terror illuminated by the flames that had killed him.

Stooping down next to the body, Loren considered the single gash on the back of the man’s shoulder and grimaced. “Hit in the back. Do you think it was a monster?”

But if it was a beast-like monster, its claws and fangs wouldn’t have left this one single mark. That meant a monster with a weapon, perhaps a goblin or an orc.

Lapis took a look at the body’s condition and shook her head. “The wound is too deep for a goblin and too shallow for an orc. And neither of them would have left a perfectly good body behind.”

Both goblins and orcs were omnivorous, and they happily ate humans. Perhaps they would ignore the burnt-up bodies, but it was hard to believe they would leave a fresh kill without having a nibble.

“Which means this is a human’s doing.”

“Presumably. And quite a number they’ve done here.” Lapis sighed, her eyes locked on one of the houses, its walls crumbling and its roof ablaze.

The presumed humans who had attacked the rest town—which wasn’t particularly large—had ransacked the lot, snatching or smashing whatever they could. Once that was done, they set the town ablaze.

“Do you think there’re any survivors?” Loren asked.

“If there are, they must be blessed by fortune. In fact, I’d like some of their luck for myself.” Lapis tried to make it into a light quip, but her face was stiff.

Anyone would be stiff when staring down something like this, Loren thought, though this all left them with a problem. “We’ve lost our bed for the night.”

“You have a lot of nerve to worry about that now, Mr. Loren.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this sort of thing.”

Pillaged towns and villages were hardly a rare sight in the midst of war. Loren, or rather his company, hadn’t engaged in the act as a matter of pride, but he’d seen other mercenaries, often those allied with his enemies, descend upon settlements with torches and ill intent. He’d also seen the aftermath.

Loren’s heart wasn’t so numb that he didn’t feel pity, but it was hardened by experience. He knew that nothing would come of losing his mind or flying into a rage. “With the whole place burning like this, it’s gonna be a while before it settles down.”

“Why did they do it, do you think? Were they not also human?” Lapis asked levelly.

Loren scratched his head. He didn’t have an answer for her. There were villages, and there were bandits—that was reason enough. But Loren knew that wasn’t the sort of answer she wanted.

“Sorry,” he finally managed. “I really couldn’t tell you.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Loren. I wasn’t trying to pressure you. As much as we demons are hated by the other races, we have a strong sense of camaraderie. Of course we fight for status and personal interest, but this seems to be something else entirely. So I was wondering why.” Despite her assurances, Lapis seemed flustered.

Loren had imagined demons as living in a more brutal world. What a thing to be so mistaken about. Humans could easily pull off what even demons couldn’t comprehend. Maybe he belonged to the crueler race.

“Well, if we’re given sufficient reason, and push comes to shove, we demons do like to be at least this thorough about it.”

“That’s actually reassuring.”

“Whoever lit the fire was naïve, though. At this rate, it’ll go out before everything burns to the ground.”

“I get it. Just shut up for a bit.”

She’d ruined the moment, but Loren was relieved. If she hadn’t made that bleak joke, it would have suggested that demons really were a kinder, more rational sort than humans. His values had nearly crumbled at their foundations.

“So what do we do now?” she asked.

“Right. For now, I guess we should look for survivors.”

“And after that, we make sure there’s nothing valuable lying around, yes? I expect no less from you, Mr. Loren. Let’s get right to it.”

“You… You know, you look like a pure and pretty priest when you keep your mouth shut.”

Lapis’s face turned so red he could see it even through the flames. She raised her hands to her cheeks and turned her back to Loren, mumbling to herself again.

There’s no time for that, Loren thought as he watched her back. To get his own move on, he led the donkey far enough away that the flames wouldn’t bother it and found a tree sturdy enough to keep it there.

Once the donkey was tethered, Lapis joined Loren in his search through the burning town. It wasn’t long before the extent of the damage became clear.

“All jokes aside, they really were thorough,” Lapis said. “They did so well, in fact, I would like to give them a pat on the back.”

And it was indeed terrible enough to warrant her frank opinion.

There were no survivors. It was impossible to say if anyone had managed to escape during the attack, but there was not a single living soul in town. Man and woman, child and elder alike had all been mercilessly slaughtered.

Even the loot Lapis had joked about was gone. From currency to home furnishings, jewelry, and food, anything of any value at all had been taken. This plunder had been so thorough that Loren couldn’t help but be impressed, even knowing how terrible it was.

“Whoever did this knew their business,” Loren said.

“Is this like how you can tell the work of a master craftsman?”

“A master like this is better off dead.” In short, only burning buildings and corpses remained. “Sure, it was out of the way, but shouldn’t a rest town have sentries posted?”

“There were, apparently. They were burnt over there.”

Lapis pointed toward the town center, where charred armored corpses had been piled up in the square. The town wasn’t so big, but it was a key point on the highway. More than a dozen guards were stationed here, and they’d all been cleanly disposed of.

“Wouldn’t they have had a master of the guard too? Sure, they weren’t elites, but they were still soldiers, right? And they were all taken out by a group of thieves? Did they send fresh recruits or something?”

“I can’t say for sure. They were all burned, after all.”

“There’s gotta be a sizable raiding party in the area. Seeing all they’ve done here, I’d say two to three hundred of them.”

A brigade of bandits that large should have sparked a rumor or five, but Loren hadn’t heard a single word about it in Kaffa.

“I hate to say it, but they could be disgraced mercenaries,” said Loren. “After the battle that tore my company apart, a fair amount of mercs might’ve been left wandering.”

There’d been mercenary companies on both ends of that battlefield. Loren’s side had lost, but even opposing companies had suffered great damages. He could imagine a number of them were like him, forced to…consider alternatives.

It was common to fall from mercenary grace into banditry. But to form a group large enough to ransack an entire town? With those sorts of numbers, they could’ve just carried on as mercenaries without resorting to thievery in the first place.

“Maybe a few survivors turned bandit,” Loren mused. “Then they absorbed others and kept at it as they grew.”

“And they didn’t think to return to mercenary work after staining their hands? How unfortunate.”

The thing was, no matter how many members a company gathered, it became impossible for them to correct course to take up mercenary work once they crossed a certain line. Once they began to pursue criminal action, they would take in others similarly desperate or depraved, causing the problem to snowball until it became the avalanche before them.

As a (former) mercenary himself, Loren didn’t like to think about it. Unfortunately, given the masterful raid and dead guards, nearly all of them taken out with a single strike, it was a distinct possibility. The combat ability on display was just too skilled to ignore.

“This ain’t good. A few more towns are gonna fall before they send an army to do anything about it.”

A criminal organization on this scale was well beyond what a small settlement could deal with. Eventually, someone—the kingdom?—would have to take notice and put together a policing force in earnest. But Loren could only imagine how many casualties would pile up before then.

“That sounds troublesome. Do you want to go crush them?”

Lapis put that suggestion out into the world a bit too casually, if you asked Loren. It took him a moment for him to catch up with her.

He blinked at her for a moment, unsure they were reading the same book, much less on the same page, then smiled bitterly. “Now hold on. If I’m right, we’re up against at least two hundred battle-hardened mercenaries. That’s not the sort of problem the two of us can tackle.”

“Then you’re going to sit back and watch until the military makes its move?” Lapis asked. “Not that it matters to me.”

Loren struggled to give her an answer. He didn’t nurse any heroic aspirations. He figured himself for a Decent Samaritan—he’d help out if he saw someone in trouble, sure—but no more than that. It wasn’t in his nature to overlook suffering or rising casualties, but he wasn’t optimistic enough to stick his neck out to tempt death.

At his silence, Lapis continued, “Our best bet is to return to Kaffa tomorrow, and head straight for the soldier outpost… But I do wonder how long it will take them to respond.”

“I think you know the answer to that. Doesn’t mean there’s anything we can do about it.”

“Is it really impossible? Between the two of us…do you really think we don’t have anything to offer?”

<Mister!> chimed the girl always in the corner of Loren’s eye. <With me around, you’ll be fine even if you do die! I can make an undead of you yet!>

I’d rather not be an undead, he retorted. Then looked up at the sky and gave it some thought. Giving up didn’t feel good. Today’s losses weren’t his to deal with, but the residents of the town were surely turning in their graves—or lack thereof. The dead never had but a single request for their last witnesses.

“Revenge… Right…”

There was no need to wipe out the whole two hundred-something lot. Loren could deal enough damage to slow them down. Hell, if he played his cards right, he could maybe force the group to splinter into smaller, more scattered threats that the town sentries could actually deal with.

It might even save some lives.

“Maybe. We’ll at least need to thank them for ruining our night’s sleep, or it won’t sit right with me.”

“If you’re going to do it, then time is of the essence, Mr. Loren. The bandits will have let their guard down as they party over today’s loot.”

Lapis stood still in the dark, watching the burning town with a sinister smile on her face. While Loren smiled back at her, he knew for a fact she was a demon through and through.