After Raizus apologized to Andius about a thousand times, there wasn’t much left to do at the camp, any of the players that had survived were in such a poor state that it took no effort at all for the pair to wander around and finish them off. It was grisly work but leaving them to die from infections or slowly bleed out was a much worse act. After he had finished cutting one of the player’s throats, Andius remembered the girl in the cage.

He ran over to where the square tent had been, and sure enough there was a woman locked inside of a cage looking incredibly grouchy. “Miss, are you alright in there?” Andius asked, trying to sound as casual as he could.

The most bitter snicker he had ever hear came in response, and the woman rose to her feet, “Oh yeah, just dandy. Nothing quite like watching people getting ripped to shreds while locked inside a jail cell!” Her words were practically venom, but something about them almost seemed playful. “Now, are you going to let me out, or are we going to keep asking stupid questions?”

Andius was at a complete loss for words, he had just cleared out an entire camp filled with players, finished off what survivors there were and got information for their main base. Getting back sass from the bandit’s prisoner was not what he had expected to come next. Andius hesitated for a moment before he turned and went to go look for Raizus. He was sitting on a log not far from the cage looking over dents in his sword. The bags under his bloodshot eyes were more than enough to tell him that his friend was exhausted. “Hey man, guy this girl trapped in a cell, and I don’t think either of us wants to look for they key, think you can-”

Raizus cut him off by just standing and stretching, letting out a long and slow exhale before giving Andius a broad smile that almost managed to hide his tiredness. “Sure thing man, I’ll turn those bars to slag, then we head out on the road, right?” He started to walk towards the cage, apparently paying attention to what Andius was doing even before he walked over.

When the pair approached the cage, the woman was still standing in the middle of it tapping her foot impatiently. More and more Andius was debating just walking away from this and letting her stay there until she was forced to respawn from hunger, but his morals would never allow it. Raizus walked over to the bar where the lock was and took off his gauntlet, his hand catching fire a mere moment later.

This action made the woman freeze completely, staring at Raizus’ hand like a cat staring at a bird. “What… was… that?” She asked, walking forward and staring mere inches from the melting metal. “You’re producing incredible heat with no source, and you aren’t in excruciating agony?”

Andius and Raizus shared a glance for a moment before Raizus spoke up, “Fire magic, and seriously you should back up lady, molten metal hurts.” He warned her, but she took no notice of his words and just continued to examine him. A few moments later the lock just fell off the gate and Raizus pulled it open with his now extinguished hand.

The woman rushed out of the cage and grabbed hold of his hand, looking it over up and down again and again, “Wow! I hadn’t seen anyone else using magic except for me this entire time! You must be someone special right? Maybe a chosen hero, or a great villain?” Her words came out lightening fast, the grumpy woman they had seen moments ago seeming to simply vanish in favor for an overly energetic girl.

Raizus just stood there, mouth wide open and completely at a loss for what to do with himself. It was Andius who eventually put a stop to the shenanigans and pulled Raizus away from her. “Right, no more of that. We’re just normal players who got lucky and found ourselves some magic.” He explained, causing the woman’s expression to sour again as she glared at him.

“Ah, so you’re no one special the-” She blinked a few times and squinted at Andius, “You said ‘we’. You have magic too, show me!” She demanded, the look in her startlingly blue eyes was a mix between insanity and excitement which made Andius and Raizus both take a step back. She started tapping her foot again, and Andius was worried just what she might do if he didn’t hurry up, so he held out his hand and let the shadows writhe and coil in his hand.

She didn’t even hesitate to dart forward and stick her hand in the shadows, her skin immediately crawling unnaturally. Shockingly she kept her hand in and looked both fascinated and creeped out at the same time. “Uhh… Lady…”

“Amira,” She cut him off, paying almost not attention to him.

“R-right… Amira, didn’t your mother ever warn you not to stick your hand in strange men’s shadows?” Andius joked, getting an irritated look from Amira. Oh good, she would be like Charla then. He lets the shadows on his hand fall away and looked a bit more closely at Amira; she looked to be in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, and her entire outfit and posture screamed that she wasn’t your average girl. “Sooo…. why exactly were they keeping you in a cage?”

Her attitude shifted like a switch had been flipped, and a deadly scowl crossed her face, “They were forcing me to make healing potions. HEALING POTIONS!” She spat the word as if it were the gravest insult possible, the look of disgust on her face hard to mistake, “That is by FAR the most BORING use of alchemy ever devised! I can make Bombs, acids, turn flesh to stone, stone to flesh. Hell I can even make a fly-…” She went on like this for a long while, neither Andius nor Raizus willing to get in the middle of whatever internal argument was taking place, and it was apparently getting quite heated.

Nearly an hour went by before Amira let out a huff and said, “So long story short, I’m an Alchemist and they were making me make explosives and way too many healing potions.”

Raizus let off a loud groan and walked away, apparently going to go looting. Andius however was a bit more interested in Amira. “So, you’re an Alchemist now, you must have done something similar in real life, right? Hey, we’re going to the city of Arcanis pretty soon here, if you want to tag along you’re more than welcome. Arcanis is apparently one of the best places to learn magic.” He paused for a minute as a big grin crossed his face, “Plus, I’m told the Bloody Blades have their main camp near there.”

As soon as Andius stopped talking about magic and Alchemy, Amira’s attitude switched once again into an expression of irritation and disdain. This woman seriously only had two modes. “Agreed, I’ll come with you. But if either of you expects me you make you a health potion I will personally shove it up your-”

“-Awesome!” Andius cut her off with a nervous laugh, waving over to Raizus who walked back over with a tired gait. “We move out in an hour, make sure we have everything we need before we go. Once we’ve made it far enough from their camp we can set up our own and rest for the night, agreed?” Everyone nodded and went about their things.

Raizus and Andius didn’t really need to do anything, so they just raided the players food stores and got something decent to eat. meanwhile Amira was having a field day packing all of her alchemy gear, the sound of a loud crash or two going off every once in a while disturbing the two’s meals.

A few minutes later everyone was packed and had a full stomach, but Amira was giving Andius an odd look. “You’re the shadow demon, aren’t you?” She asked rather bluntly, making Andius choke on a sip of water. He looked over at her with wide eyes, anxiety written all over his face, but she just laughed and waved him away, “Oh calm down, I don’t care about bounties. Just wanna know if what they say is true.”

Andius looked at her with a bit of interest, he actually didn’t know what they said about him. “I’m not sure really, I’m just me. I do what I think it right and if people don’t like that, they’re free to hate me.” His words get a bit dark towards the end, as if realizing for the first time that he really might be considered a villain.

The group went silent for a short while after Andius’ words, Raizus and Amira sharing a look before the former put a hand on his friends shoulder. “Doesn’t matter much though, right? None of them actually know you anyways.” Raizus said with a grin on his face, “Besides, you just wiped out the worst bandit threat in the area, anyone who knows you did that would be an idiot to think that.”

Andius nodded a few times, “I guess, but they’re just gonna come back. It’s not like they’re really dead or anything.” He paused as a thought struck him, why hadn’t they gotten any experience for that fight? Just as that thought entered his mind, a bright light flew into the sky accompanied with a high pitched whistle.

Looking over to where the flare had been fired from, there was a player who hadn’t been killed crawling away as fast as he could, legs torn to pieces and what looked like a wand in his left hand. Andius didn’t even hesitate, his body shifted to it’s mana-form in an instant and a Hell Hound leapt out of the shadows, swiftly ending the mans life with a simple bite and twist. “Shit, we missed one.” He turned and looked at his companions as he gathered his things and held out his hands, the shadows churning beneath the both of them. “We need to leave now, that was probably a signal warning any nearby members.”

The Hell Hounds materialized beneath Raizus and Amira, lifting the pair off the ground and onto their backs. The one he had already summoned ran over and allowed his master to mount him. “Let’s go.” Amira was about to shout something, but the hounds suddenly took off at blistering speed, turning her complaint into a simple scream.

As the landscape flew by, notifications popped to life in Andius’ face, but he quickly waved them away as the sounds of arrows flew by. Looking behind him, there were five people on horse-back who had already caught up with them. Where had these people come form? If they had gotten here so fast, they should have been present for the fight.

He didn’t have time to think, he simply had to cast. He held out his arms again and forced his mana to manifest. This would be the most mana he had spent at once, and he wasn’t sure what that would do to him. He focused as hard as he could, the shadows around the wolves he had already summoned thickening, growing like a cloud of smoke in the forest.

Suddenly almost all of the mana in his system flooded out of him, his veins pulsing that violent purple of dark magic before nine smaller wolves leapt out of the shadows! Pain seared against Andius’ nerves as all of that mana left his system, his vision going hazy and nearly falling from his mount. Pain resistance did very little for this kind of agony, so he just gripped into fur and mentally ordered his wolves to attack those who were pursuing them.

Amira rode closer to Andius and held something foul smelling under his nose, causing him to immediately jolt up and gag. “Smelling salts, you’re fine! Just focus on riding and don’t you dare black out on us!” Something told Andius that he should really be more afraid of Amira than the people chasing him. Andius looked behind them at the pursuing party, only two of them remained, but they looked different from the bloody blades.

The man and woman that were chasing them wore white armor, literally white. It was a heavy full plate armament that looked way out of the price range of the players he had seen, and the woman had on a strange gauntlet that seemed to radiate light. One of the wolves leapt at the woman only to get clawed by her gauntlet, a blinding flash of light shredding it’s body into nothing but wisps of smoke. “This is bad!” Andius called, pointing at the woman, “She’s got magic! And it counters mine completely!” as if to punctuate his point, a blast of blinding light shot between him and Raizus, causing the wolves to panic a bit and start running faster.

It didn’t take long for another bolt to fly by, missing Andius by barely an inch and causing some of his mount’s fur to sizzle away into nothing. “We need to do somethi-” His words were cut off as his wolf suddenly vanished beneath him, causing him to tumble to a stop in the dirt. Amira and Raizus skidded to a halt and jumped off their wolves, ready to fight. Amira had a wooden staff with what looked to be a lantern on the top of it, but it was filled with water instead of fire.

The two who were chasing them jumped off their horses, the man drawing a long sword whereas the woman just raised her gauntlet and started to trace sigils of light in the air. “This is the demon?” The woman asked of the man beside her, sounding almost mocking. Now that he had a better view at them, Andius realized they actually wore different armor. The man wore heavy steel plate armor that lacked any fancy designed and was painted white, the only thing that really stood out was his helmet, which was completely closed save for two vertical slits for his eyes.

The woman on the other hand wore armor that was very clearly designed just for her, the metal of it seemed to be multiple interlocked plates to allow movement more easily. The design itself was curved to fit her figure vaguely, making it rather obvious that it was a woman under all of the armor, but didn’t have the skimpy qualities of usual MMO gear. The real eye catcher was her helmet though, it was a tight fitting full helm with wide eye slits, metal mesh protecting her eyes. To the sides of the helmet were two wings, which to him seemed more threatening than anything he had seen yet. The worst pat was, he had no idea why this woman terrified him so much.

One of her gauntlets seemed fairly normal, but the other seemed far too old to be a part of her gear, and it was nearly the size of her head! The fingers of the weapon were clawed and ended in what looked like quartz, sigils carved all over the white metal which definitely wasn’t steel. “Absolutely.” The man said, already slowly walking towards the group. “This is the guy that’s been terrorizing Woodsdale, I saw em kill the mayor with my own eyes!”

Andius’ eyes went wide with rage, standing up and balling his hands into fists, “I did no such thing! I may have caused a scene there, but I’ve never once killed any citizens!” he was fuming, but the man just laughed at him and shook his head. that just made Andius even more angry. He looked at the woman and gave her the dirtiest look he could manage, “You’re being manipulated, I’m no demon and I’ve only killed bandits.”

To her credit, the woman turned her metal clad head towards the man slowly, her eyes shining a golden white color beneath her armor before turning to look at Andius once more. This entire time she’s still been tracing those sigils in the air. “Regardless of your innocence from those claims, I myself witness you using the magic of the Demons. The punishment for this is death.”

Amira stepped forward this time and held her staff out in front of Andius, blue sigils forming in the air in front of her. Just what are these symbols? “An element is neither good nor evil, you know this as well as I.” Amira said, sounding completely calm despite the tense situation. Andius and Raizus just shared a look as the later pulled out his blade.

“Dark magic corrupts. Not only it’s user, but those around them.” The woman said, completely dead-pan. Andius felt something inside of him shifting, certain parts in his body creaking and straining. “I am Cerinthuim, Paladin in service to the light. You,” She looked at Andius once again, “are an affront to that light, and so you must die.”

Fear coursed through Andius’ system, but something else was rising up. He felt words at the back of his mind, at first barely a whisper, but it kept building and building until it was almost a shout, “I challenge you to Aak’Al!” The words meant almost nothing to him, but they clearly meant something to the woman, because she flinched and didn’t move for a few seconds.

Everyone turned and looked at Andius, Amira and Raizus both looking far more confused than anyone else. “I… Accept.” The woman said, and suddenly the whole world went dark.