Newly Summoned Demoness: Side Story Two (Part Two) (Patreon)

The streets were fully thrumming with the energy of the day as they made it back to their inn. The morning breakfast fare had been replaced with the thick smell of roasting meats and fresh bread from nearby food stalls outside of the temporary residence.

As they walked, Yolani leaned in close to Elania. “Can you believe this? Demon chickens,” she whispered loud enough to be heard over the clamor.

“I’m more worried about what kind of mess they’ve made,” Elania replied. Despite how funny it was to be dealing with ‘chickens,’ her mind wouldn’t stop running with the negatives. “I mean, we’re talking about creatures that were locked up for who knows how long, now suddenly free…”

Yolani frowned and patted her shoulder. “They are just chickens. They probably didn’t get out of their cages, or if they did, we just need to lock them back up again.”

“Somehow, I don’t think it will be that easy,” Elania said flatly. “Why? Because the Magister sent us to do it. If it there weren’t any problems, then he wouldn’t have bothered.”

The frown on Yolani’s face deepened. “You’re right… we should take precautions. The gear I scrounged together for an expedition should fit the bill.”

“For the spider thing if the Magister’s don’t come up with the ward-stuff?” Elania asked.

Yolani nodded. “Whether you are going into the depths to hunt for magic reagents, or diving into a demon infested chicken kennel, the stuff you need is generally the same, artifice-wise.”

Inside the inn, the early morning chaos had subsided, replaced by the calm of midday. The innkeeper greeted them with a nod as they passed through the common room, now mostly empty save for a few stragglers nursing their drinks. No one paid them any mind as they mounted the staircase in the back corner up to the second floor.

Yolani stepped into the room and made a straight line to the corner where most of the gear was stashed.

Or a zig-zag line, really. The room was really cramped, and the bed took up the middle of the room pretty effectively. Elania had a few of her things in the opposite corner, just to keep them separated and went to that.

Pieces of Marcus’ armor that she had kept had been polished and refurbished. They had purchased a new pack and things for her to replace the rest of the travel things since the ones she had gotten on the expedition to Neftasu from the monks were all nearly trashed from abuse. She pulled out the extra changes of clothes she kept in it and put them on the bed.

They weren’t going to need them for a short adventure diving into a basement.

Her [Vorpal Dagger] was still her primary weapon, at least for now. Yolani had suggested getting it appraised, since she wasn’t easily able to use her [Advanced Identify] to figure out the alloy it was made from. It was on the list of things to do, but not really important enough to run off and see to them.

What Elania knew was that the weapon would melt if she pushed too much power through it, but it was remarkably stable compared to regular steel.

The only issue was the poisonous effect that had been on them when she had first got them from Marcus had nearly subsided from repeated use of [Power] infusion. She’d once had two of them actually, but in one fight she’d melted one until it was ruined.

The metal had gone into a box until she figured out what to do with it.

“Jokes aside, from what I know about how people fear demons, Demonic Chickens could still be dangerous?” Elania asked hesitantly.

Yolani lifted her wood chest of artifice items and set it on the bed while rifling through it and adding things to her carry-bag. “We’ll be careful. If Ranolf fed them only chickens like he was supposed to, they’ll mostly be smart chickens. There might be a small amount of bleed through from their original forms, but that will have been replaced by them fully evolving into [Chicken] species.”

Elania looked at her and stared. The other girl didn’t notice.

Ranolf doing what he was supposed to do? She’d only really met the man two times, the first he’d been creepy and leered at her and offered to take her down into said kennels to get a contract.

The second time, she’d ripped his throat out with her [Darkwalker] form’s teeth.

Somehow, she didn’t feel confident that the man wouldn’t have cut corners when possible, and if there were laws or regulations on his demon keeping, he probably would be the type to have done whatever was most profitable or beneficial for himself.

That might have been an uncharitable assessment considering her lack of knowledge, but the city lent itself to corruption. Even with the Magisters beginning to enact wide reforms, the process of removing the rot was only just beginning.

“So what’s the plan?” Elania asked. “We are going to have a plan, right?”

Yolani stopped and looked up at her. “We agreed not to try to wing things so much, didn’t we?”

There was a moment of silence, and then they both suppressed a giggle. It had only been a few weeks, where they’d been nearly dead, enslaved, or worse. They’d run recklessly through events, and even if that had been caused by things out of their control—it wasn’t something either of them wanted to happen again.

That they could laugh about it together already—was a blessing.

“We’ll want to get some of the Ironfist, probably Harlock, and a few others, to go down with us. Depending on the status of the elevator, we might need to engineer a way down. The shaft should be the only way in and out, and since there isn’t wild poultry escaping onto the streets already, it should be secure still,” Yolani said.

Elania nodded as she listened. “How big is the Kennels? You’ve been done there before, right?”

Yolani’s face turned thoughtful. “Yeah... It’s pretty big, about as big as the shop is aboveground, actually. It’s all just one floor, though. There were probably… Uhhm. Six rows of probably twenty or twenty-five cages? Call it one-hundred fifty chicken demons at maximum.”

“Okay. How deep is the elevator shaft?” Elania asked.

“Oh, it’s pretty deep. Takes a minute to go down. Maybe five to six floors? The elevator was an old-type,” Yolani replied.

“Yikes. That’s pretty deep compared to what I thought, but it explains why nothing made it out, even if chickens can fly.” Elania blinked. “Eladu chickens can fly, right?”

Yolani gave her a raised eyebrow. “Of course they can fly, unless you clip their feathers.”

“Just checking. You know, simple things here can be way different from on Earth,” Elania mumbled.

They spent the next few hours discussing how they’d go about dealing with different issues and things while waiting for Henri to show up. When the knock finally came, they were ready. Henri had gathered a dozen City Guardsmen who waited for them outside, and the walk from the inn to Artificer Row wasn’t that far.

The familiar face of sergeant Harlock of the Ironfist greeted them at the gate. “Someone going to prison?”

Henri shook his head. “The Watch is confiscating Ranolf’s abandoned shop.”

Harlock grunted. “About time someone did something about that place. Been right nerve-wracking with some of the noises coming out of it. We’ve had two guards refuse to do night patrol because of it.”

Elania frowned. “You haven’t spotted anything coming out, have you?”

“Nothing like that, or we’d have escalated for sure. But our contract definitely doesn’t cover going down that shaft,” Harlock replied.

Yolani and Elania shared a glance at each other. Part of their plan involved taking the Magister’s suggestion to hire some members of the Ironfist to go down with them.

“Actually, we were hoping to hire you and a few others. Maybe Kael, Lucas, and yourself? We are going down there to secure the kennels and make it safe,” Yolani said.

Harlock grunted and looked between the two of them for a moment while the guardsmen marched through the gate and towards the shop to secure the perimeter.

Finally, the grizzled mercenary spoke. “Ten large gold a head, and no less.”

Yolani inhaled. “That’s way more than the Dungeon run we went on!”

Harlock nodded. “That was offset by the Syndicate royalties for the run. Besides, this would be for the city. Not you, lass.”

Elania cleared her throat. “Well, the city is paying for it, so why not?”

Yolani nodded. “We’ll take it. We might also need some scaling equipment if the elevator is out of commission.”

“I’ll fetch the boys. After the last expedition, they were looking for a chance to earn some more coin,” Harlock said. He left one of the gate guards on duty as they split ways, leaving Elania and Yolani to make their way up to Ranolf’s shop.

The light stones overhead slowly dimmed as the afternoon lingered and approached evening. The change in lighting somehow made the shop look more ominous than it should have been. Henri and the Guards had already opened the large loading doors and activated the shop’s lighting.

That it hadn’t been looted or rummaged through by Ranolf’s apprentices was a miracle and probably a testament to Ironfist’s security patrols.

Yolani and Elania went straight to the elevator in the back of the workshop. A small gate blocked access to the empty shaft behind it, the indicator over the entryway showing an arrow stuck half-way between the bottom and top markers.

“Looks like it froze mid-use?” Elania said.

“Power source looks dead,” Yolani muttered as she pulled open an access panel. Sure enough, there was a mana shard inside, bolted and banded between two metal pipes.

Elania reached in and touched the shard. It was certainly empty, and a light tug on her finger drained away two dozen points of [Power] in a flash. The entire apparatus suddenly lit up.

Yolani hissed, “You were the one who brought up planning ahead!”

“Sorry!” Elania blurted. “I wanted to check it and then it had a lot of suction.”

The gears behind the wall began to groan and clatter. Both of them backed up a bit, looking at the progress arrow. The elevator was coming up.

Yolani turned and looked over her shoulder. “Hey! We need some help over here!”

Henri appeared instantly, followed by all the watchmen who were still in the shop. They formed a loose battle line in front of Yolani and Elania. Everyone drew their weapons, or in Yolani’s case, her combat wands.

“Any idea?” Henri asked.

“Was halfway down for who knows how long. Could be chickens, could be anything,” Elania replied quickly.

The elevator itself was an open platform surrounded by an open cage. As it appeared, everyone visibly relaxed.

The elevator was empty.