The echoes of battle settled, and silence descended, punctuated by the crackle and snap of the fading flames. Nic retrieved the treasures he’d won; two magic bags, both filled with riches and treasures from the Invaders’ backers, and a paintbrush weapon.

He was especially excited by the last one. In the few seconds he’d fought with the locust demon, it had demonstrated how the paintbrush could seamlessly flow between offense and defense, with sharp strikes or binding moves. The sheer versatility made it an excellent choice for Nic…

The gargoyles descended. Their faces were hideous and skeletal, with horns erupting through the empty eyesockets. They breathed out a strange fog, trailing from the open edges of their jagged mouths.

“Inskpur.” On cue the little wyvern appeared on his shoulder. “Tell them I don’t want to fight them, and yeah, they don’t want to fight me either. I’ll be taking what the others already collected, but I won’t steal any more of their treasure.”

As his translator relayed the message, the gargoyles relaxed. One of them let out a series of guttural grunts and stony, rasping syllables of gravel, which Inkspur translated as,

“More came this way. Four others. One in charge. Very powerful.”

Nic nodded along. Nothing he didn’t know.

"One of them is… false."

Now that did get Nic to raise an eyebrow. "False how?"

The gargoyle raised a hand to its face, brushing the long, curved horn that extended from its right eye. "We see… inside… and their inside does not match their outside. Something has crawled into their skin. Something dangerous.”

That did make Nic pause and recalculate. As far as he could tell, there were two possibilities here. One, that this was totally unrelated to the hunt, and one of the Invaders had simply fallen prey to some kind of parasitic enemy. The second…

The second was that this was more trickery from the dhampir. They’d sent assassins after him- why not go after the other Settlement as well, infecting them with a sleeper agent?

It was something to remember. Depending on how things broke, Nic might be able to set the enemy against each other.

Lifting the two stolen bags over his shoulder, he waved to the gargoyles. “Thanks.” He bent his knees back and forth, making sure there were no splinters of bone left lodged in his leg by that brutal drop. His body really was a machine- as long as he was willing to take the pain, he could push himself through hell and come out unscarred.

With a running start, he leapt down, landing on a lower balcony of the valley’s winding trails. Leap by leap, vault by vault, he descended down the emerald forest of mosses and fungi, heading towards home…

---

Nic was uncharacteristically cautious as he swam back through the submerged tunnel. In the dark, he could only rely on his danger sense, and that was fallible at best. Somewhere…

Somewhere ahead, the old slave was waiting to stop him.

If it had been Nic, he would’ve waited somewhere in the dark. The old man couldn’t breathe underwater, sure, but there were plenty of spots where the passage rose up into an island of dry land. He would’ve waited there, weapon in hand, counting the moments until he heard the splash of someone coming up out of the water…

But there was no ambush. When Nic reached the lake at the core of the underground labyrinth, the withered old slave had barely moved since their battle; he was reclining on the island in the lake’s center, his staff beside him, lying back and looking up at the distant sky where it shone through the chasm’s mouth.

Nic rose onto a standing stone slippery with black moss, and the old man sighed. With a slow, unhurried ease to his motions he sat himself up and cast his long skinny arms over his knees.

“Back so soon? Then, the young ones didn’t put up much of a fight…” The old man called. “Shame for them, I s’pose.”

“Yeah, shame they won’t have the chance to cut my head off.” Nic spat back. Inkspur hopped out onto his arm to provide the translation. “Why, what does it matter to you? If they die, wont you be free?”

The slave just shook his head. “Oh, maybe. Maybe. But some of them might haunt me…” He gazed up again, watching a cloud drift across the sky. This late in the day, the blue had shifted to a deep and saturated orange shade, like the embers sitting at the bottom of a fireplace. “I won’t get to enjoy this world.”

“Being fair, this world is mostly stuff trying to kill you. Not a lot of chances to relax.” Nic watched with an uneasy feeling.

It didn’t feel right, fighting this geezer. If anything he’d want to free him- but there didn’t seem to be an easy way to make that happen.

“Oh? I think with your strength, you could afford to relax for some time. Maybe a year. Maybe more…” Slowly, the man was rising back onto his feet. Something about his motion reminded Nic of a marionette. He moved with a slightly hunched back, his joints leading ahead of his limbs, his gait loose and seemingly rickety.

“The path of cultivation…” The slave shook his head. “No, if you’re not careful, it’ll rob you of any sense of gratitude. You’ll look at treasure other men would die for, and think of yourself as poor. You’ll look at a life above the masses, and grind your teeth thinking it’s not enough…”

“Yeah. I know what you mean, old fart. I really do. It’s like a sickness in them, huh? Like something empty in their stomach that can’t be filled in…” Nic gazed across at his enemy…

“Are you heading up, or down?” The man asked.

“Up.” If he had the chance, even though he liked the old man, Nic would go for the kill. Nic promised himself that, trying to keep in mind that even ‘death’ would only mean being sent back to their homeworld…

And to a life of servitude, he thought bitterly.

But the old man just said, “You can go.”

“I can go?” Nic echoed back in surprise. “Aren’t you supposed to stop me.”

“My orders read, and I’ll be exact, ‘kill any wretches you see and stop anyone from going after us.’ But you’re not going after them. You’ve already gone, and now you’re coming back the other way, sooo…” A shrug. “Not my problem.”

His grin was radiant. The small chance to interfere with his masters…

It must have been a taste of freedom.

“Thanks?” Nic said, stepping forward cautiously. He was still waiting for an ambush. None came.

The two stared each other down for a moment, and then Nic flickered away, teleporting higher up. With a few more leaps, he was out..

Free…

Into the light of the fading day.

---

Nic still had a scratchy feeling on the back of his neck, a lurking sense of dread. He’d been waiting for something to go wrong for so long it felt like a prophecy.

As he returned to camp he half expected to find it destroyed, everyone dead.

Instead he was met with a wild cheer, and offered a wineskin filled with cheap, punchy liquor. They clapped him on the back and welcomed him down at the fire they’d set up. It felt like he had a foot in two worlds. On one hand, a sense of dread was pressing into his chest, tightening his lungs until he could barely breathe; but all around him the humans were full of excitement and bravado for the next day of the hunt.

Their happiness- their idle chatter- made it hard to hang onto that sense of dread, and keep himself alert.

Simply to have something to do with himself, he began to tally up his gains from fighting.

The dhampir assassin had left behind a thin whip-sword that seemed almost impossibly tricky to use, as well as a small bag. Within was a clay talisman of the type the surviving assassin had used to escape. Beside it was a single pill tied up in a wrapping of fur, a dark scent escaping. That scent…

It reminded Nic of the battlefield. Of the blood drenching the earth into a gory mud…

Imperial Execution Pill. E-Class // Medicine. A berserking pill made by the alchemists of an ancient empire, it was taken by zealots before entering battle, burning away their cultivation forever to give them an intense burst of strength. In the days of the old empire, each pill was sealed with the name of a chosen enemy; the emperor himself would assign these death warrants.

Next, he took out the enchanted bags he’d retrieved from his enemies. The ogre’s was sealed, since its owner was still alive, but Nic was confident he’d eventually be able to break in to seize the contents. As for the other…

It was a rich find. The locust-demon had mined two wagonloads of spiritstone, enough for a massive gathering array. Underneath was a set of carved ivory pieces for a game similar to chess, with a folding board of brass and dark wood.

Sage-Carved Thane Pieces. F-Class // Treasured Artifact. Made with a craftsmanship that contains sacred Concepts and imbues them into each work, these pieces are used to play Thane, an ancient game of strategy and deception. Because of the artistry, playing and meditating with these pieces will subtly raise Mental Acuity.

Nic grinned. Perfect. Training tools like these weren’t much use to him, with his limited time, but they were fundamental to a Settlement. Digging deeper he found a calabash bottle of fragrant cultivation pills, a set of simple techniques written on slips of white bark, and a few other miscellaneous treasures that he swept over with a curious eye.

A pair of shortswords patterned with fishscales, able to summon watery blades to extend their reach…

A slim crystalline vial containing deadly poison…

As he searched through the bag’s contents, music wafted through the scene. Nic looked up, briefly, and froze.

Sitting across the fire from him was an elf with long, luxurious golden hair tied in braids and sealed with white clay. A white wolfskin hung over his shoulders. His skin was dark red, with black iron rings around his slender fingers. A harp sat in his lap, his fingers dancing over the strings, the music deep and rich with a melancholy timbre that felt almost like the instrument was trying to speak.

Nic instantly leapt for his feet and snatched up his sword, flicking it towards the outsider’s throat.

The elf didn’t flinch.

And more worryingly, neither did the human hunters. In fact they barely seemed to notice anything was happening. Their eyes were glossy, glazed over, barely able to focus. They laughed too hard at jokes nobody was telling, as if they were caught in a wild party of their own imagining…

“Don’t worry. I’m not here to harm you…” The voice was silky and mesmeric.

“Sofia? If this idiot tries to hypnotize me, tell me so I can kill him.” Nic snarled.

“I can do that. And, Nicolas, be careful. This isn’t a technique that could be used at E-Class, not on so many people.”

“I’ve come a long way to meet you, Nicolas. I represent the Ghost-Toll Legion, and I wish to draw you to our side.” The elf never stopped playing his harp. Every note, every movement, flowed together to form something greater; Nic could feel his body reacting, an urge like hunger growing in his belly. It was the demonic essence within craving to consume and devour other demons.

He shook his head, stepping back. “Would you stop that.”

The harp fell silent. “I see. You’re still rejecting the devil’s blood. Unfortunate. You have a chance to grow much, much stronger, Nicolas. To rise on the backs of your enemies and surge towards the heavens…”

“Yeah, okay, look. I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, and your weird little sales pitch isn’t going to change that. Do you have anything to say that’s not cryptic nonsense?” He didn’t like this stranger. He didn’t like the casual way they’d showed up and put his followers under a hypnotic spell; he didn’t like how they talked to him or the smile on their face as he threatened them.

“Hmm.” That smile didn’t falter. His fingers tapped restlessly against the wooden frame of the harp. “I can see we’re not alike, me and you. You don’t care for riddles or niceties, no. So let me be blunt, as much as it hurts my poet’s soul…”

“The Legions are coming, Nicolas. The demonic curse has been seeded widely across this world already. When the Second Wave begins, the Legions will move in and begin supporting sides. This has happened before and will happen again.”

“But it doesn’t have to. No. With an agent on the inside, we could keep the other Legions from arriving. Cut away the anchors that would allow them to bring their troops and their corruption to this rich, green earth…”

“All out of the kindness of your heart?” Nic asked, spitting out sarcasm.

“No, Nicolas. Out of the very most spiteful and petty part of me. The Legions have carved resentment and hatred into my heart of hearts. I merely want to pay them back by robbing them of what they find most precious.” He tilted his head, his gaze colliding with Nic’s own. “You understand, don’t you?”

“I do. Doesn’t mean I trust you, but yeah, I understand.”

“Trust can come with time, although we don’t have too long before the other Legions arrive and my plan is null and void. How about I leave you with a gift…”

He held up his hand, and green smoke materialized into a hexagonal piece of jet black stone written with blazing letters.

Nic gave it a suspicious glance, running over the stone with Archive Recall in search of a trap, and then reached out to reluctantly accept it.