Rainhorn: Chapters 16-18 (The Weirkey Chronicles) (Patreon)

Welcome to the new year! One last bit of business from the old year is that I'm eligible for a Stabby award on r/fantasy. However, they're very serious about vote manipulation, so please only consider voting if you participate in the community and have opinions about a variety of categories:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/km89zi/best_of_rfantasy_2020_the_stabby_awards_voting/ 

Lots of soulcrafting these chapters, hope it's enjoyed. ^-^

-

Chapter 16

With a goal in mind, Theo dedicated himself to maximizing efficiency. Quickly earning enough money for a proper vehicle wasn't possible with just hard work, but aiming to prepare for the hunt, with all their advantages? Entirely different problem.

They'd left the inn almost immediately to conserve money, and it had been unnecessary luxury as soon as Nauda recovered anyway. Instead they slept in cheap tents outside, which also helped them get more used to the environment. Nauda had seemed a little discomforted at first, since she'd expected them to all crowd into one tent for warmth, but that was obviously not Fiyu's expectation, and she'd eventually accepted it.

Nauda herself was the cornerstone of several points of strategy. Soulcrafters were too common for Deuxan society to give them any real respect, but as an Archcrafter she could get them access to better work than menial labor. In truth, she did little of the work, since she needed to spend her time soulcrafting new rooms on her second floor, which was fine since Theo and Fiyu could handle the actual tasks. All they'd really needed was the proper credentials.

He and Nauda had just returned from a long guard assignment that had lasted several days, less action than standing around as soulcrafters and discouraging others. One of the smaller families intended to build a hunting lodge and needed guards to prevent targeting by their rivals. It didn't pay as well as some others, but the benefit was that they had significant time to soulcraft during the job.

"I don't like this." There was no real emotion in Nauda's voice, but the way she spoke heavily while staring into the forests was worse.

"This job? It might not have been the most profitable, but I thought it was a good use of time."

"Not this in particular, the whole system and how we interact with it. What we're doing." She rubbed her eyes with one hand as they continued walking. "Most of what we've done hasn't helped anyone, just shuffled a bit of money around. The court jobs are the worst, just playing meaningless politics."

"But it pays well, and it's mostly harmless." Theo wasn't sure he wanted another long discussion, but she seemed honestly troubled by her thoughts. "If you're looking to fundamentally change Deuxan society, or improve the world, that's just not going to happen with our current resources."

"I'm not saying that I have an alternative, I'm just saying I don't like it. Though... what would you say to a dangerous job, if it paid reasonably well?"

Theo shrugged. "If it's a simple threat we can survive, then the danger is just another benefit, because we need an opportunity to test our new soulcrafting. If you mean getting involved with the court, then I don't think that's worth it."

"Actually, it's the exact opposite." Nauda finally gave him a bit of a smile, though the heaviness in her voice didn't lift. "Apparently there's a town some distance from Anguedan that has a demon problem. There was an incursion a year or two ago that the court didn't quite finish squashing. Somehow several of the demons sacrificed themselves, so the second stage demon is hurting the villagers. They've put up a reward, but it's not enough to attract soulcrafters from any of the prominent families."

"Did they say what breed of demon it was?"

"The rumors say that it's beast-like, something like a large wolf."

"Then there's a good chance we can't kill it." The exact differences between demonic stages varied, but Theo had strong memories of his first encounter with a bear-like demon. "The beast-like demons are tough to start, and their second stage can be so powerful that it takes a Ruler to put them down. Even with the three of us combined and solid tactics, it probably wouldn't be enough."

"If it was really stronger than Archcrafters, it would have destroyed the village, wouldn't it? I'm not saying that it's harmless, but I think it can't be that dangerous. Just a threat that's fallen between the cracks, and something that we can do to help."

Seeing that she wasn't going to back down easily, Theo switched to a different strategy. "There's probably no harm in investigating, but we're not ready yet. You're still building up your second floor, and we have chambers in progress. Once we have that sorted out, then maybe we stand a chance."

"Well..." Nauda eventually shrugged and returned to her normal self. "If the courts haven't dealt with it for years, I suppose the villagers can survive a little longer."

When they returned to camp, they found Fiyu soulcrafting as usual. What wasn't so usual was that she stopped and hopped to her feet, lifting a bag to show them.

"Welcome back! While you were gone, Senka and I completed a difficult job!"

"What is it?" Theo glanced inside the bag and saw that it contained a large number of silver flowers. The first thing he noticed was that they weren't sublime materials at all, which puzzled him. They might once have been beautiful, but these had been jammed together in the sack and were now just a crumpled mass. "Are these valuable? I'm not feeling any cantae from them."

"They're not for soulcrafters, Theo." Nauda picked up one and examined it with satisfaction. "When properly squeezed, these flowers produce the silver dye they use in so many of their robes here."

"Everybody is wearing them, so how valuable can they be?"

Fiyu shook her head and pulled the sack closed. "The larger families have protected fields of flowers to produce the dye, but smaller families do not. This makes it very difficult for them to afford the type of clothes that everyone likes here, and they must wear less silver clothes. Though... I do not see much of a difference."

"Doesn't matter so long as they're willing to pay a premium for these." Theo took the sack from her, since he knew that she wouldn't want to go into the city to deliver them herself. "But I imagine they're rare in the wild, so how did you find them?"

"That is where Senka was helpful. She was able to locate small clusters of them, but now she is very tired. I am speaking quietly so we don't wake her."

Theo rolled his eyes. "Yes, let's make sure not to wake her. So that she can sleep, and not for any other reason."

"Oh, come off it. She's earning her keep." Nauda rapped him on the shoulder as she passed to grab a few things from camp. "We're going to go get paid for our work, Fiyu, are you sure that you don't want to come?"

"No. I am fine here." Fiyu sat back down in her tent, quite evidently happy to be away from the city.

"Then do you want us to buy any sublime materials for you?"

"I am working on soulcrafting the mirrorbark into reflective plates. I believe I could fashion even finer surfaces, but I am still learning how to work with them."

It wasn't the first time they'd had essentially the same conversation, and it wouldn't be the last. Theo grabbed some food from his tent and chewed it while he followed Nauda toward the city. Having Fiyu remain at camp was logical, both because she preferred it and because she could render it invisible to most. Meanwhile, he and Nauda could pool their skills and credentials in Anguedan.

By now, they worked together smoothly, delivering results and accepting payments without drawing too far apart, in case of a duel challenge. The flowers that Fiyu had gathered turned out to pay extremely well, worth over 100 Silver Crowns. Meanwhile, their token guarding earned them only 20, most of that to Nauda due to her rank. Not that it mattered, since they pooled their resources to try to maximize their strength for the hunt anyway.

As they walked away, Nauda rubbed a small badge emblem between her fingers. "Another one of these. Is this family's esteem worth anything?"

"It's not a major enough family, and we don't want to announce our allegiance to anyone. People are giving them to us more to recruit us than as payment. Any cantae?"

"Barely any." Nauda tossed it to him carelessly and he caught it in his palm. "The sublime materials used to make these are almost worthless, so I don't know why they bother."

Many of their jobs had given them emblems fashioned from weak sublime materials, which proved to be a major part of local soulcrafter politics. Since Fiyu said she didn't need them and Nauda scorned the concept, Theo had been taking them all for a temporary room. "In case you haven't noticed, they like ranks here. But most of their soulcrafters don't work fast enough to ascend, so they have all these emblems and trinkets to make them feel like they're advancing."

"You've seen this before?"

"Anguedan seems to like them a lot more than other Deuxan cities I've visited, but yeah. In other places, some are actually quite valuable. For example, a major court or family will give you a sublime material with their sigil, which generates a reasonable amount of cantae and also marks your soulhome so you get special treatment at the establishments they own."

"Huh." As little as she liked Deuxan, Nauda did consider that carefully instead of dismissing it. "I can see the value, but I'm guessing we're not getting any benefits like that here?"

"Probably not." Theo crushed the weak metal in his palm and it slipped into his soulhome. He'd put it with the others later, but for now he had higher priorities.

They returned to one of the city's primary markets for sublime materials. For the most part, it was just an errand now, Nauda picking up more sublime stone to craft new chambers. Many soulcrafters preferred that their primary building materials come solely from their home world, or even tried to fashion all their walls from a single material, but Nauda didn't seem to care.

"What about this?" Nauda spoke up from the other side, drawing his attention. She stood in front of a bright blue tent that he hadn't seen before, likely a merchant from out of town.

Theo walked closer and, though the man's wares contained many unusual items, he immediately understood what she meant. The dark lump of metal sitting on one side of the display rug looked dull, but he felt cantae flowing into it. At first he'd thought that the rug was simply bunched up around it, then he realized that the fabric was actually being drawn toward the metal. When Theo experimentally reach out to touch it, he felt it pull on his fingers and the rug seemed to cling to the metal.

"You like it?" The merchant gave them both a broad smile. "You're the first people to identify real value in this borderlands city. Have you ever, perhaps, heard of magnetized iron?"

"Of course." Theo tossed the lump into the air, noting how it sped back to his hand faster than gravity alone would suggest. "Is this a sublime material that follows similar principles?"

"Just so! Everything is drawn to it, not merely certain metals. If you rub it against substances, it will briefly make them stick together as well." He promptly demonstrated with two silk ribbons, though they didn't cling together strongly. "It can be extremely useful for construction, or it could be an interesting piece in your soulhome."

Given his blueprint, Theo obviously wanted it, but he pretended disinterest. Nauda pushed him to get it, as if it was a gift they didn't care greatly about, and they slowly wore down the merchant. But even with all of Nauda's negotiating skills, it wasn't cheap, costing them most of what they had just earned. Eventually they pulled back to speak privately.

"If we buy this," Theo said, "I'll let you have my share of all the jobs for a month."

"Don't need it. Sublime stone isn't so expensive." Nauda instead gave him a wry smile. "What I want from you is a promise that we'll make specific, concrete plans to hunt down that demon."

He hadn't really believed that Nauda would forget about it, but Theo had hoped that she wouldn't push. Still, this was one of the first valuable materials that fit his blueprint, with nearly Archcrafter cantae density. Thinking about the soulcrafting he could do, Theo shrugged. "Deal."

-

Chapter 17

They had explained to her about seasons, but Fiyu was still troubled by the changing weather. Tatian might be horrible, but it was consistently horrible all the time. Now, as the air grew warmer and the leaves and grass went dry, she couldn't escape the fear that she had wandered into an unknown region. According to information Companion Nauda had learned from people in the city, the weather would become more unpredictable as well.

To distract herself from the environment, Fiyu spent more time soulcrafting. At the heart of her stealth chamber was a glass sphere of moonmist gas, a substance that obscured part of the Outer Moonscape and only occasionally appeared in sublime form. She had won it in a contest against all the other young soulcrafters in the entire camp, which had been among her proudest achievements as a child. Now that she had seen the obscene numbers of people who gathered in cities on other worlds, it felt less impressive.

She had originally placed that sphere on a pedestal, then hung it from the finest of sublime spidersilk. That created a technique that was exceedingly subtle, but sadly it was too delicate to stand against more powerful cantae, at least at her current tier. Relative Guchiro had told her he could give her another material to support it when she was ready, but their unity had been torn apart before he could.

For the most part, she had struggled to find suitable sublime materials on other worlds, which was why she was so pleased to find the mirrorbark. It was bright and strong, yet it deflected attention away from itself. She had begun carefully fashioning panels of it to place around her moonmist sphere: they would deflect enemy cantae, leaving her core technique free to hide her.

Recently, Companion Nauda had been unable to find her, even as an Archcrafter. Fiyu wasn't certain how much more work she could do with her current limits, but she thought the chamber was very nearly complete.

It had been a pleasant surprise to find the mirrorbark, but she wasn't sure what she could do about some of her other unfinished chambers. She found herself spending long hours polishing the exterior of her tower to perfection and smoothing the transitions between materials, because she didn't know how to proceed in many of the others.

She counted herself fortunate that she had nearly perfected her sensory chamber before leaving Ichil, because she had found nothing remotely appropriate for it. Her blade technique was also sadly unfinished, though she thought that the sharpness of rainhorn antlers might be appropriate enough to intensify it. They were so bright and colorful, however, they didn't seem quite appropriate... maybe they could go in her light chamber instead.

Her meditation chamber had been somewhat improved with carvings inspired by Companion Theo, but she still fundamentally lacked materials. Meanwhile, her warming chamber had long been an unfortunate void, far from its ultimate design. Though she'd placed unpleasantly warm Tatian materials in it, those were nothing but a stopgap measure.

Some of her other chambers might find some other solution, but Fiyu realized that she was only focusing on them to avoid her other thoughts. It was so strange to feel herself changing, without any relatives to guide her. Fiyu opened her eyes in the real world and saw her traveling companions working beside her, which only made it worse, so she retreated into her soulhome.

Yet, standing in the core of her very being, Fiyu could not help but contemplate other matters. For many years, Relative Guchiro had been the only relative in her life and the only person that she trusted. Companion Theo and Companion Nauda had become trusted traveling companions, and she hoped she could one day call them Friend, but she was uncertain if she would ever call them Relative.

When she failed to control such thoughts, her mind inevitably drifted into gloomy territory. After months away from Relative Guchiro, she was beginning to miss him deeply. She had not realized how much she longed for silent Ichili intimacy until she discovered the equivalent on other worlds.

Was she changing, without him? Her relatives had always taught her that she would adapt to new circumstances throughout her life, both as she aged and as she encountered new people. She had experienced it first-hand with Child Senka, who prompted parent-like feelings in her. Yet those were merely whispers, not something that she sought with her whole heart. Perhaps one day she would have a family of her own, but she was still too young.

Yet, traveling together with companions who were her own age began to change something within her. Once she recalled Relative Guchiro saying that groups of a single age were unnatural, that children needed to learn to interact with youths of different ages as well as elders. Apparently that was not true on other worlds, as Deuxans all traveled together in packs of the same age.

Most likely, her relative would have grunted and said that proved his point. Fiyu smiled as she thought of him.

Though she was not sure how she would change, Fiyu thought that she was fortunate to have found two such traveling companions. Companion Nauda was very kind, if strange, and had already ascended to Archcrafter. Companion Theo was always understanding and had an insight into soulcrafting unlike anyone she had ever met before.

Fiyu set herself to her work, hoping that they would not leave her behind.

~ ~ ~

As he walked through his soulhome, Theo just wasn't satisfied. It was a mistake to think that there could be "perfect" sublime materials for a given stage, and in fact that thinking could lead to dead ends or bottlenecks. But there were definitely stages of quality, and he wasn't where he wanted to be.

For a start, his soulhome was entirely too dependent on carvings for many of his essential rooms. It was the easiest method to improve a chamber when he lacked sublime materials, and the carvings would enhance the effects no matter how many sublime materials he gathered, but the method was too simple. Good blueprints required a mix of design, materials, and style.

Yet the technique that he'd hoped would provide a path forward, gravitational torsion, had proved a wall. He didn't think there was anything wrong with his design, it was simply impacting the world too dramatically to pull off with his current soulhome. Since he wasn't likely to find sublime materials embodying such a concept, then his only choice was to eventually obtain more intense cantae to overcome the wall.

As for his non-technique rooms, he lacked enough materials to make them feel properly lived-in. He'd put all the emblems and badges they earned into one of the empty rooms, since weak cantae generation was better than nothing. It might have made him a little more resistant to Deuxan techniques and a bit faster, but the effect wasn't dramatic.

The repelling stone that they'd bought in Nlukoko was efficient but weak: he could generate an effect like anti-mass, but it was so minimal that it had almost no use. On the other hand, the magnetized stone was a bit too strong, threatening to damage his soulhome whenever he tried to use it fully.

Even combined, they just weren't enough. He was still restricted to increasing or reversing the world's gravity, not creating any of his own. Once he was an Archcrafter, he would be able to fuse those aspects together into a new technique, but at the moment... he could have converted one of his middle rooms to another technique, but that would mean doing a lot of work now that would be wasted later. Interim solutions were fine and necessary, but he drew the line at setting back his future soulcrafting.

Now that he thought about it, he didn't like the distribution of his four corner techniques. Though his cantae flowed through all of them without major problems, he thought they could have been better balanced. If the mass and anti-mass chambers were on opposite sides, the soulhome would be more thematically balanced and he might even manage to improve flow between them.

That was a minor distinction, the kind of thing he hadn't even worried about in his past life until he was a Ruler trying to ascend to Authority. That had been the point where some of his simplistic habits started to catch up to him and he'd needed to go back and renovate rooms that had been nothing but big slabs of rare materials. This time, he would have no such problems.

Presuming that he survived long enough. Everything Magnafor had said about them potentially being targeted returned to mind, though he still couldn't solve that problem.

Theo reminded himself that he was being a perfectionist, not that it changed his conclusions. There was no point comparing himself to mediocre soulcrafters, not when he might be pitting himself against demons and entities far more powerful than any others he'd encountered. He needed to do things right, which meant at least keeping up with Fiyu and Nauda.

Having had enough theoretical soulcrafting, Theo returned to the real world and recruited the two of them to do some experiments. He wasn't capable of generating a point of mass outside himself, but he could use either one of his mass-manipulating techniques on himself, so he needed to know how much influence they could have.

Nauda experimented with pushing him while he increased his mass, able to notice a difference that would be negligible in a fight. If he'd been a physical fighter like he'd originally intended, perhaps he could have used that to anchor himself in place, but he'd turned away from that path. Trying to use anti-mass on himself had no effect other than making it even easier for her to push him, so that was another bust.

Testing both with Fiyu, on the other hand, proved interesting. She was capable of launching light bursts less loaded with cantae, so she threw them in his direction to let him test. Unfortunately, no amount of mass or anti-mass, even trying to work together, could so much as budge the path of any of her bolts. Nauda added weaker cantae bolts, to similar effect. When they threw small rocks, the paths did veer slightly, but not enough. At his current strength, the gravity he could control had little effect, which meant he would be vulnerable to cantae, wind, and other forms of energy.

Still, the experiments showed him a few new things about how far he could bend his techniques, so they were worthwhile. They also seemed to provide amusement to Fiyu and Nauda, as he continually ate a faceful of cantae bolts or rocks. It didn't even bother him, since they did their best to help.

In the end, he decided that his blueprint was a good enough first step. He just needed to figure out how to take a second one.

~ ~ ~

Though most soulcrafting instructors would have told Nauda to fashion the walls of her entire second floor before she did anything else, she resolutely followed her own path. Even with four months, there simply wasn't time to waste processing that much stone, especially given how much harder it was than as a first tier soulcrafter. She needed to develop herself before opponents came at her again.

Nauda knew she was technically an Archcrafter like cruel Delarde or arrogant Esaire, but they'd had time and plenty of resources to soulcraft their second tiers. Her cantae might equal theirs, but they had more, along with better techniques and more support from their soulhome.

She'd considered building a second floor on top of the secondary building she'd soulcrafted in Myufuru, but Nauda wasn't sure that it was a strong enough foundation to build upwards. For the moment, she'd added shelves to make it into a larder and storage room, moving her chest and sublime food into it. No doubt instructors would have told her to get rid of it, or attach it to her main soulhome before she built her entire second floor.

Instead, Nauda had built two rooms in her second tier, directly on top of half her first floor. It gave her soulhome a lopsided look, but it was good to establish a basis she could expand once she had the time. She did have some more Deuxan stone bricks, the start of a third room she worked on when she had nothing better to do, but she doubted it would be finished any time soon.

Meanwhile, she focused fully on her two Archcrafter rooms. Whenever he was talking about soulcrafting, Theo always went on about designations that she didn't necessarily agree with, particularly a strong dichotomy between chambers dedicated to enacting techniques and chambers that focused power within the self. In her experience, every chamber was a piece of the soul that did some of both... but in this case, his way of looking at things was useful.

Nauda stood on her roof, looking through the doors to her two upper chambers. 

The left was a proper "Tatian" room that anyone in Myufuru would have envied: a plush rug of sublime fibers she'd purchased in the city, a wooden pedestal she'd carved herself, and the nullstone enshrined on top. It was one of her most prized possessions, since the nullstone neutralized cantae around it. Absorbing it earlier in her life had nearly killed her, and she had only now gained the capacity to build it into her soulhome.

On the right... that room would not have been accepted in the same communities. One of her sublime materials had been the blood of a powerful sublime beast, which she had used to paint all the interior walls bright red. Before, the blood had eaten into the stone, but as an Archcrafter, her soulhome could absorb it and grow stronger. At the center, she placed the skull of the same beast, though she needed to find an appropriate altar to make better use of it.

Finishing the blood-painted room made her feel immediately stronger, her cantae flowing with an animal strength. During a simple job clearing land, she'd tested her strength and been surprised that she could pull out a tree by the roots. Whenever it came to a physical fight, she'd be much more capable.

Unfortunately, making full use of the nullstone had proved much more difficult. Within her soulhome, it didn't nullify her own cantae, but drawing that nullifying property into herself was difficult. The nullstone might actually be a bit beyond Archcrafter, so she could utilize it in her soulhome, just struggled to use it in a technique.

When she had time to concentrate, she could eliminate a bit of cantae from around her. When Theo threw exaggeratedly slow bolts in her direction, she was able to cancel them out, though it cost her much more cantae than simply dodging or slapping it aside. Against an assault like Fiyu's lightstorm, the nullification was essentially worthless.

So, despite having finally found a place for almost all her Archcrafter materials, her goal still drifted beyond her reach. Nauda frowned over her soulhome, considering alternate paths or improvements. It looked like both of those would just take a significant amount of work, no clever way around it.

On top of that, she still hadn't been able to replace her old staff, reducing her to working with an ordinary staff and the broken fork of her old weapon. Eventually, she would need to renovate the room that contained the technique, and she had plans to incorporate one of her second floor rooms, it just all required more time and sublime materials.

Abruptly an idea occurred to her: it didn't solve any of her problems, but it was something worth doing. Nauda dropped down to her first floor and picked up her telescope carefully, carrying it up her ladder to the second floor. It didn't fit in either room, but she set it out in an empty corner of the roof, as if it was an intentional balcony.

When she attempted to use her viewing technique, she was surprised at how swiftly and crisply she saw the other's soulhomes. Theo was soulcrafting up a storm, as usual, and Fiyu waved cheerfully at her. Neither were bothered by her observation... so suspicious in some ways, yet trusting in others.

Just setting the telescope on the corner felt a little too simple, though. Nauda went back to retrieve some of her unused bricks of Deuxan stone, placing them together in a little corner that partially shielded the telescope. Once it peeked out from over the simple wall, she felt that her design was far more unified. Yes, this could become the soulhome she needed.

Back when she had acquired those Archcrafter materials, she had expected that she would need to fight her way to ascension alone within communities she couldn't trust. Instead, she was soulcrafting in the wilderness with two people from other worlds. Her life had gone completely off track, and she wasn't sure whether or not that was a good thing.

-

Chapter 18

Against his better judgment, Theo found himself headed out to fight a second stage demon. Though the species varied, conventional wisdom held that a second stage demon could kill any first tier soulcrafter, and even an Archcrafter wasn't guaranteed victory. With some species, going against it was suicide, but he accepted Nauda's logic that such a dangerous demon would have been taken care of by the local court.

"They're up ahead." Nauda pointed her staff at a cluster of trees, their natural silver growing dull with the season. "The villagers will be able to give us a general area where to find the demon, based on where it's attacking people, but after that, we're on our own."

It seemed they were indeed met by a few Deuxan peasants, an older couple who might be elders and a few soulcrafters. A glance at their soulhomes showed they were rather small, but not due to incompetence or laziness: they'd never been given the sublime resources to build anything more. Those carefully managed and reinforced rooms seemed a bit sad, now that he contemplated them.

"You came." An old man hobbled toward them, relief obvious in his eyes. Such an overt display of emotion would have made him a laughingstock in a court, but the city was no longer even on the horizon. "We're grateful, but be careful. The demon has already killed two soulcrafters and maimed another."

"We don't know if we can help you, but we'll do our best." Nauda touched the elders warmly as she passed, which seemed to communicate even though it was a strange gesture on Deuxan. "Where has it been sighted?"

The peasants directed them past the carefully managed fields to a region with scraggly wilderness trees, their leaves a dull iron. As they walked closer, Theo reflected on just how much space was devoted to farmland. Based on his research, that was actually to be expected given the size of Anguedan, but he was struck by the fact that he'd never noticed the fields before while in Deuxan. They must have existed, yet within the courts there was never the slightest thought as to how they were fed.

As soon as they left the fields, Fiyu wrapped them all in her technique and they began hunting. It took a frustrating amount of time to find any sign of the demon at all, but eventually they discovered one of its victims. The dead animal appeared to be a less regal relative of the rainhorn, torn open and then left to rot, since demons killed without eating.

None of them had any senses specifically designed to locate demons, but there weren't that many sources of cantae in the region, so eventually they honed in on a powerful source. The demon sat beside a tree, its lithe body curled. Yet it wasn't sleeping - as far as he knew demons didn't sleep - it just waited. Fortunately, it gave no sign that it had noticed them.

Fighting demons was always a risk because there was no obvious indication of their strength, only a void where they should have had a soul. It looked more like a black lion than the wolf-like or bear-like demons he'd seen, but it would probably have been as tall as him even on all fours. One of the few consistent indicators of demon stage was size, and it was too small to be a third stage.

Then again, the demon that had killed his friends had been much smaller than a titan...

"Can we ambush it?" Fiyu asked softly. Nauda held her staff carefully, eyes narrow.

"Based on the body, I'm afraid it's going to be fast," Nauda said. "Theo, can you try to completely eliminate that advantage?"

"I'll try, but demons tend to be slippery against cantae." As he spoke, Theo flexed his fingers and raised them carefully, just to be prepared.

"I think we should spread out, then attack its flanks whenever it tries to target one of us. Fiyu, you find a guarded pos-"

In the middle of her sentence, the demon sprang from its seated position, racing directly toward them. Theo realized coldly that there hadn't been a mistake, it must have sensed them indirectly and chosen a precise moment to strike. He'd seen soulcrafters die assuming that demons were just animals, but they all possessed a malicious intelligence that shouldn't be underestimated.

He tried to hit it with gravitational fields... and the demon barely stumbled, charging onward. Fiyu unleashed a hail of bolts, but it darted to the side with unreal speed, then dashed toward them.

If not for Nauda, it would have torn directly into him. He'd lost track of the demon's movements when it was suddenly in front of him, struck on the head by her staff. She actually smashed it into the ground with physical strength alone, then attempted to bind it in place.

Moments later, the demon twisted oddly, rolling out of her binding technique and lashing claws at her leg. Surprisingly, Nauda not only dodged, her foot came back hard, kicking the demon in the head. Yet it barely stumbled, on its feet right next to them...

This time Theo reversed its gravity, sending the demon up into the air. It twisted as it rose... but then it began to descend, its nature eating away at his gravitational fields. Demons didn't really counter techniques, as far as he'd seen, they just pressed through, as if anything made of cantae struggled to get a grip on them. Exactly why he hadn't wanted to fight this one.

Before it reached the ground, Fiyu unloaded, an extended storm of light searing into the demon. Though her bolts couldn't tear through the demon's body, it twisted in pain, slowly overwhelmed by the onslaught. Theo put everything he had into keeping it in the air, letting her fire on it longer, but he knew that it couldn't last...

The instant it touched the ground, the demon was gone, flashing to the side in a dark blur. It arrived beside Fiyu, claws reaching out to gut her, but Nauda struck it again with her staff. This time it only stumbled once, then darted around behind her.

Theo desperately cast another gravitational field underneath it, trying to neutralize its gravity. Though he didn't manage to send it into the air, the demon's claws hit the ground too lightly and it skidded to the side instead of clawing Nauda in the back. All three of them recovered and turned to face the demon, catching their breath and drawing in more cantae.

Instead of attacking, the demon leapt into one of the nearby trees and vanished into the shadows.

With such monstrous speed, he was sure that it could explode from hiding at any point. Unfortunately, their current position gave it several different angles to attack from, and though they could retreat from the grove, the demon wouldn't be stupid enough to let them get away unharmed.

"It's hunting us." Nauda spoke quietly, without emotion, and scanned the area around them. "Be careful."

"I..." Fiyu looked more uncertain than he'd expected and he wondered if her sensory technique was failing to locate the demon.

"At any moment, it could come charging out, so-"

"I have a better idea." Theo cast a gravitational field beneath the three of them and sent them high into the air. They lurched at the top as he switched gravity, and his control wasn't precise enough to make them hover smoothly, but they oscillated far overhead, out of reach of even the demon's leaps.

"Not bad." Nauda smiled at him, then glanced to Fiyu. "Why don't you clear out its cover?"

Fiyu promptly lowered her hands below them and unleashed another hail of light. From so high up, the bolts scattered widely, tearing through a large part of the trees. Only a few seconds later the demon darted from out of hiding, glaring up at them in uncomprehending hatred. This time Fiyu didn't attempt to target her blast at all, just kept blanketing the area.

Snarling, the demon began dodging the bolts and running toward one of the standing trees. It raced up the side and Theo realized that it intended to leap directly up at them. He began to send them higher on instinct, since he didn't want to underestimate its jumping ability, but Nauda lifted her staff and made a downward gesture.

Since he could only trust her, Theo sent Nauda plummeting under normal gravity again. The demon had leapt from the tree, claws extending as it rocketed up toward them. Theo could only watch, wishing that he could give Nauda more mass before she hit.

Nauda's staff collided with it first, hitting the demon's neck with such force that she overcame its momentum. They slammed down into the ground with terrible force, but Theo didn't dare try to slow their fall. He dropped himself and Fiyu more carefully, looking for the outcome amid the dust.

Finally he saw it: the demon lay motionless with its neck twisted, while Nauda staggered nearby. It had slashed her across the leg, leaving a nasty claw mark, and the impact seemed to have taken something out of her, but the demon was dead.

"We..." Nauda looked at them blankly, then shook herself. "We should take the body to show them. So they won't be afraid anymore."

Or so that they would believe them and give a reward, but it amounted to the same thing. While Fiyu helped bind Nauda's injury, Theo walked over to the demon and carefully removed its gravity to levitate in the air. Now that it was dead, it didn't resist his cantae at all, though there was something unnatural about its body. Not a sublime material, yet similar enough to be used.

It took them much longer to get back due to Nauda's injury, but when they returned to the villagers, it set off a surprisingly raucous celebration. Theo had been part of soirees and ballroom dances in Deuxan, all of them highly refined affairs, and the cheering villagers shocked him. Not a Tatian celebration, certainly, and the villagers immediately broke out casks of wine, but it was still something he hadn't seen before.

"The demon..." The elder looked at the floating body and slowly shook her head. "I am glad to see it dead, but the body shouldn't remain here. It could bring bad luck, or more demons. Or, if the court accuses us of something..."

"We'll dispose of it completely." Nauda gave the old woman's shoulder a reassuring rub while she glanced at Theo. 

As soon as he could take the body out of sight, he absorbed the demon's remains into his soulhome. It wasn't useful for anything there, but he threw the corpse into his singularity. Using demonic matter could have negative effects on some soulhomes, or clash with their spirit, but his absorbed it easily.

Though they couldn't stay for the full celebration, the villagers insisted on repaying them beyond the very modest reward. A few of their local healers went to work on Nauda's leg, and though they weren't very talented, Theo appreciated the gesture. If not for their help, getting Nauda healed might have entirely wiped out their earnings from the job.

"We'd like you to have this." A younger man appeared beside him, presenting a bolt of what appeared to be silk. "It's called fairysilk, and it's an extremely rare sublime material. Perhaps you could use it?"

Theo was skeptical about how rare it actually was, but when he ran the material through his fingers, it did seem reasonably strong. The cantae embedded within was durable and he suspected that it could be made into good clothing, not that they had anyone with the necessary skills. "That's an item of some value. Are you sure?"

"If you don't take it, some other soulcrafter will." With that, the man shoved it into his hands and went to join the others.

After some thought, Theo began tearing the silk into strips. It proved more difficult than he expected, but the fairysilk slowly made its way into his spirit, whole and stronger on the other side. He had no idea how it would fit into his soulhome design, but sublime fabrics could be rare, so he would figure out something. When he experimented with it, the fabric proved surprisingly elastic, perhaps enough that he could use it in some gravity or pressure room.

For the moment, he left it behind in his soulhome and focused on the real world. What they'd done wasn't in any way heroic, just basic security that the Anguedan court should have provided. Yet they had ignored the demon for so long, forsaking the unwritten agreement between the court and its vassals.

Nothing could be done about it, of course, since the peasants were powerless to strike against the court. What struck him in that moment was that this wasn't a statement of the court's strength, but its uselessness. It sat in the city like an enormous leech, playing its political games and draining everything around it.

Not that there was anything he could do about it. Perhaps one day, if he managed to stop Vistgil... but that thought was his last, as it so often was. With so much unknown, there was no point thinking further.