Demoness 2 - Chapter 46 - Roadbumps (Patreon)

A pounding on the shop door made Elania almost jump.

She maintained her composure and cross the bedroom to the balcony to inspect the street. There was an invisible shielding ward, but she still felt conspicuous leaning out in the open considering the events in the city.

One of their escorts was making the noise.

“What’s going on?” Elania called down to him.

He stopped pounding and looked up at her. “We’ve been out here an hour, and we need to get moving.”

Elania suppressed an eye twitch. Who was in charge here? “We’re almost done, but we are still packing.”

“We need to get moving,” the guard repeated.

Elania considered telling him they would hurry, but decided that she didn’t like to be given orders. “We’ll be done when we are done.”

She started to pull back inside when the guard started pounding on the door again.

Yolani came up the stairs with a worried expression. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Elania said. “Just a guard being impatient.”

Leaning back over the balcony, she reached out a hand and dropped a chain of weighted [Power]onto the ground. They exploded into small puffs of light, with a correspondingly loud series of cracks.

The guard ran and jumped behind the carriage, and the others looked around in confusion.

“Don’t bother us unless you’re under attack!” Elania shouted. “Or next time it’ll be serious!”

The other guards laughed at the man, while he glowered.

Yolani just stared at her. “Did you just... prank a Magistry guard?”

Elania shrugged. “He was being rude?”

Yolani let out a breath, then seemed to relax. “I guess so. Before all this, those Magistry guards could haul you to prison with just a word.”

Elania frowned. “I don’t think they can do that now.”

“Well, no. Not when their Magister is your peer,” Yolani said. “But they could still cause trouble. Maybe.”

“You think Magister Keswick is my peer?” Elania blinked. She really hadn’t thought of that, but when she thought back to their interactions...

She certainly had treated them as such. It hadn’t stood out to her at the time, because... well, she was Elania. She was used to being treated as an equal by people who were older and more experienced than her.

And [Power] and levels and aristocratic rank and whatnot hadn’t really been something she grew up with. Oh sure, maybe a lawyer or a judge, or a police officer was someone who you deferred to, but...

Well, considering it like that, she’d been a bit of a brat...

Somehow, she felt like they deserved it, though.

Respect the badge, but not when they are an asshole?

Yolani reached out and flicked her forehead in a copy of the gesture that Elania often used when the girl was stuck thinking about some artifice thing.

“Elania? You still with me?” Yolani asked with a smile.

Elania blinked and shook her head. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“They are right. We shouldn’t take too long. Let’s go through things again and make sure we leave nothing important behind,” Yolani said.

Elania nodded and checked out the bedroom again. Their clothes hadn’t been a critical item, but they had stuffed one bag full of an equal amount of things for the both of them.

Having dirty underwear would have been a disaster, even at the end of the world.

The vast majority of what they packed were Yolani’s tools, though. Stripped down from cabinets, desks, and workstations, and neatly wrapped and packed into the weight reduction bags.

That proved necessary. Otherwise, she felt that the bottom of the carriage would probably have fallen out.

As it was, they’d be riding on the side doors with the guards since the entire inside was going to be packed full.

“It’ll be like an armored car, full of goodies,” Elania mumbled to herself.

“A what?” Yolani asked.

“Nothing,” Elania said. “Just thinking about how we might need to defend the carriage from looters on the way to the Magistry.”

“That’s not funny. There shouldn’t be any looters,” Yolani said.

“It’s not been long, but things can fall apart pretty fast,” Elania said. Not that she had experience with that, but she’d read enough news articles to know that not everyone was as lucky as her.

Well, she was in the thick of it now, so maybe she was the unlucky one.

One of the guards came up to them. “There really aren’t any more of the things you had us looking for, Ms. Aetherhart.”

Yolani nodded. “Alright. Let’s pack it all up and get out of here.”

In the back, Yolani pulled out a pair of distinctly old-timey looking pistols. “I’ve been working on these. They’re not as good as your magazine musket from before, but they should be better than nothing.”

A close examination showed that the thing had four barrels, and the hammer was a little more complicated than usual. Honestly, it reminded her of something from a steampunk novel.

It had a hook on it, and it slid nicely into the empty holster on her belt.

Elania offered a smile. “Thanks. The musket probably saved our lives in the fortress, so even if it’s not a super weapon or anything, I’m sure it will be useful.”

Yolani nodded, but didn’t smile. “I hope so. It uses the same ammunition as the Guards’ weapons, so we won’t have to worry about anything special.”

There was a moment of silence between them, and the only sound through the shop was the boots of their escort tromping in and out.

Elania glanced at the shower station. “Wish we could take that with us, too.”

Yolani shook her head. “Impossible. But your new magic seems pretty effective for cleaning.”

Elania grunted. “Still nothing like a hot shower.”

When the guards inside began to haul out the packs, the irritated guard ushered the ones that had been on sentry duty inside to hurry things along.

“Seriously, what’s the rush?” Elania asked, as she and Yolani followed them out.

The guard looked at her. “You might be a seraph, but we’re still human. They could attack again at any time, and Magister Keswick was clear that they already infiltrated every district. The Artisan District isn’t safe. We need to get back to the Magistry as soon as possible.”

Elania frowned, but nodded slowly. She wasn’t entirely convinced, but it made a sort of sense. It was just the man’s urgency that was getting to her.

Yolani was solemn as she pulled the shop door shut and then sealed it with the young wards they’d set up. “I hope the shop is still here when we get back.”

There were a lot of things that came to mind, but Elania didn’t feel saying any of them were right. Instead, she put her arm around Yolani and gave her a side hug. “It’ll be okay.”

The carriage doors didn’t want to close, and the guards had to push and pull to get them to latch. For a moment, it had looked like the frame was going to crack, but it held.

Elania made sure she was on the same side of the carriage as Yolani, mostly just so she could catch the other girl or protect her. The guards were all armed with swords and muskets, but she was the only one with high-powered magic in the group.

Although she had seen Yolani slip a few different wands in her belt...

They’d need to coordinate again later, so she’d know what her friend was packing for combat and utility.

The carriage took off with a jolt as the driver had to adjust for the heavier than usual load. The artifice engine didn’t seem to mind too much other than having a slightly slower start, but that was easily mitigated by the downhill slope of Artifice Row.

They were moving so fast that by the time they neared the checkpoint, they nearly didn’t break in time to avoid running over a small group of people that had formed in the middle of the street.

“Stop! Stop! We need help!”

“What’s going on?”

“You need to explain!”

The guards at the front waved angrily at the people, while shouting for them to get out of the way. The ones on the flanks pulled their swords while the two on the backseat drew their muskets.

Elania fingered her new pistol to make sure the leather wasn’t going to catch if she needed to draw it quickly.

What was she thinking? It would be more effective to blast away with her magic, at least in this case.

Yolani already had a wand slip out of her pouch and into a hand.

The group refused to disperse, and then Elania recognized some of them. They were artificers they knew.

“Mira! Finn!” Elania called out. The two older artificers filtered through the crowd to speak with her and Yolani at a safe distance.

“Elania! Yolani! What’s going on? We heard the fighting, and the guards told us to stay inside,” Mira said.

“Is it safe? Should everyone evacuate to the Guard Fortress or Magistry?” Finn asked just as quickly.

Elania shook her head. She didn’t think that anyone who didn’t have a very good reason to be allowed in would receive shelter, at least not anytime soon.

“You really should go inside. It’s probably the safest,” Elania said.

Yolani’s conflicted expression said volumes about the option, considering the state of things. “I would put everything you have available into your wards and defenses. It’ll be safer than just about anywhere else you can go.”

The two artificers looked at each other and then back at them. “We’ll do that, then. But I don’t think you will get that lot to cooperate.”

Elania glanced at the slowly growing crowd. They were drawing more and more attention. They were sitting ducks for an ambush.

She turned back to the two artificers. “Hurry. This really isn’t safe.”

The two nodded and then turned to go back to the shop.

A guard at the rear fired his musket into the air and the guards shouted for the people to disperse again. That just set them off more. The only thing keeping them at bay were the drawn swords.

Elania grabbed Yolani and jumped up onto the roof, then released the reins on her [Power]and flexed her wings.

“Disperse.”

The entire crowd went silent at the proclamation. It had been [Power] enhanced with as much authority that her [Divinity] and seraph transformation carried.

Of course, when they actually started to retreat was when the first pillar of light turned a half dozen of them into ash.