The seeress was prompt in finding where I had set up my temporary lodging, which was either a good or terrible sign. I had a feeling that it was likely the second as I had not been able to sense any major concentrations of Spring influence anywhere I had been in the castle. It was very likely that the girl was no longer here, though how the demons had managed to leave me eluded again I could not quite figure out. They were not powerful enough creatures to create their own portal to another realm and the one present in the dungeon had been destroyed. I sincerely doubted that they had been provided with any warning, that would have required one of the servants from human castle to have escaped and told someone and we had been very thorough and methodical in culling every single one of them. It was even more unlikely that someone under my command would have tipped them off, there was simply no reason why any fae would care about the fate of the demons and all of my soldiers would shudder at the idea of what I might do to them if I found out they had betrayed me. The only sound, logical reason I could consider was the goblin had revealed themselves and used their potent magic to realm walk the girl away. It worried me that such a creature would take that much of a vested interest in keeping her away from me, the creature should be wanting to run from me as fast as they could, not playing games.

“Lady Nommu,” the seeress said with a slight bow of her head.

“Commander,” I corrected with a growl.

My eyes swept over to my new demon recruit and was satisfied that she responded to Emmi’s lack of a proper greeting with a raise of her eyebrow.

“There is no trace of the girl,” the seeress confirmed, giving no indication that she cared about my snap correction to how I should be addressed, “she has been spirited away before we could get to her once more.”

“By the creature I assume?”

“Not this time, it seems they have split up.”

“Who moved the girl then? There are not many people around powerful enough to realm walk without a portal.”

Emmi looked to be ready to give a prompt answer, then her eyes picked up on the demon woman in the room sitting politely next to the door. Apparently she had been so caught up in wanting to make her report that she had not scanned the room prior to entry. Her face lit up with a look of intrigue and looked like she might switch subjects to why the woman was in the room with me, but I quickly indicated that she needed to finish the report before we moved on with a shake of my head.

“It seems that a group of humans came to fetch her and take her back to the human realm. We do not have much information on who exactly they are or what they want with the girl, we only know they are human based on their lingering magical residue. Quite impressive they left a trail at all, they must have a relatively powerful mage as their leader.”

“More humans? Easily dealt with,” I declared with a wave of my hand. “Annoying that we are continuing to jump between realms, but this time we will not linger waiting for information to proceed, we will leave as soon as everyone is fed since the creature is no longer with the girl.”

“We do not even know who they are or where they took her, Lady Nommu.”

“Commander,” I snapped again.

She sincerely knew how important it was to me both on a personal and professional level to call me commander and the fact that she would not entertain using my proper title even when she was in a room with a stranger was really grating on my last nerve. I would always use her proper title when appropriate, I respected her too much not to, the fact she did not extend the same respect to me despite insisting that she loved me and my family was maddening. I was beginning to wonder if she was mis-titling me specifically because it annoyed me or she got some thrill knowing that I would hesitate to do any harsh punishment to a seeress, especially one as close to my family as she was. If she kept pushing, I would need to stop considering her close to me and treat her like any other misbehaving soldier, seeress or not. Seeresses were hard to replace, but not impossible and it was important not to let this problem fester and indicate that I was weak.

“Who is this?” she said, unable to contain her curiosity anymore. “She does not look anything like the others.”

Ana cracked a small smile and lowered her head much deeper to the seeress than Emmi had done for me. She lifted her head and turned to me and bowed again to indicate she wished to speak, I waved my hand to indicate that she was free to speak.

“I am Ana, a magical trainer hired by this kingdom,” the demon replied.

“A magical trainer?” Emmi looked even more intrigued.

The fine hairs on the demon’s lavender body raised and she shivered violently as the seeress scanned her magical potential. The fact that the demon had not passed out or seemed to be in physical distress really spoke to how powerful the demon woman’s magical potential was. I had not done a full scan on her yet to let her recover from her magical exhaustion she would have had from having rejected being frozen, but if she was already recovered enough to further withstand such an immense density of magical aura, then she was far more powerful than I was giving her credit for.

“You are quite powerful for a demon,” the seeress said with a sincere aire of respect.

It was not often that the seeress would address anyone directly that was not a fae. She considered anyone not a fae to be an inferior creature not worth her time or energy.

“I have been told that before,” the demon said with a low, husky laugh. “One must be powerful in order to train others though and that is what I’ve been tasked to do for the majority of my life.”

“Your power would be wasted on the wretches your people call mages,” Emmi said with a roll of her eyes, “it is obvious that you would know that.”

The demon glanced at me and I could tell that she was waiting for me to give a sign that I was ready for her to start divulging what she knew.

“I think it’s about time you start explaining who you are and what you know,” I said.

“It is a very long story, perhaps the seeress would like to have a seat while I talk.”

Emmi looked surprised but started to move towards a chair. “You can identify what I am? This is bound to be a good story.”

The demon woman grinned, her elongated incisors peeking out from beneath her upper lip. “Potentially a good one, but also a long one, I will try to truncate the details where I can, I know that we need to be on the move sooner rather than later.”

“We?” Emmi gave me an amused look. “Have you added to our roster?”

“Yes, I have.”

I did not care to give her any of my reasoning at the moment, I did not want any questioning of my motives or choices right now. I would get enough of that once we got back to the Winter court with a demon in my ranks. That was bound to stir up more controversy and vile accusations than I cared to think about just yet. It was common for commanders to come back from conquests with slaves and prisoners, but it was entirely another to have them brought back as more of equals. It was not going to go over well and my argument that she was far too powerful to be wasted as a slave was going to intially fall on deaf ears. I only hoped that my loyalty to the queen would incline the majority of the objectors to bite their tongues long enough for me to get a proper argument out. It was not often I tried to intentionally stir the pot and when I did I always had solid reasoning to back me up. Hopefully my track record would allow me some leverage in the coming fight. Though, in the past it had not stopped many of them from shouting for my resignation or even my execution as a traitor to the crown.

“Go ahead and explain yourself, Ana,” I commanded. I had not demanded an explanation from her yet to save her the trouble of having to recount everything again before the seeress.

She bowed her head to me again and tilted her head slightly to the side as if contemplating exactly where she should begin.

“I was born to a relatively poor family on the outskirts of this realm, near where the wilderness and all the dangerous creatures become too thick and powerful for my kind to find it worthwhile to expand at this point. It is often said that people from my kingdom inherently carry more magical potential as we are constantly exposed to high natural levels thanks to the land we live on.”

That was an interesting idea that indeed held water, it was basic knowledge that more powerful creatures would result for centuries growing and developing near magical nodes. It was uncommon to see there be enough of a disparity in a single realm to make the same species divulge so drastically, but not out of the realm of possibility, though it sounded like the development was more recent than it should have been. Magical nodes tended to be incredibly ancient, as part of the land as a slowly worn mountain. If the node had been around as long as logic dictated it should, it should have made her people drastically different from the other demons to the point where they might as well have been their own species, yet she was very much still a demon, though remarkably different cosmetically. It was yet another thing that was worthy of investigation once I had secured the girl and sent her back. I’m not sure many fae would take much interest in pursuing the anomalies in lesser realms, but I was finding the events unfolding fascinating, nothing in these realms seemed to be as it should be.

“I was born particularly gifted in magic and it became the ticket out of poverty for my family,” she continued. “I was talented enough for the nobles in the area to pick up on my abilities and as soon as I was old enough to run instead of toddle, they paid for me to attend magical training in hopes that I would grow up to be someone who could train their mages and perhaps even become some sort of sage.”

“Is a sage a sort of seeress to your people?” Emmi asked.

“That is close,” the demon answered with a nod, “I don’t think that we battle with the same level of magic that fae do so it is a little different, but a good comparison.”

“Interesting,” the seeress murmured, leaning back in her chair with a slight smile.

“That never exactly came to fruition, mostly because I have never been particularly interested in waging war and being a part of battle and it became obvious earlier on that I was not someone who did things that I did not already want to do.”

That was an interesting statement, because she had made it very clear from our first interaction that she had every intention of working with us. Most creatures, perhaps wisely, avoided the fae like a bad smell, not wanting to entangle themselves in our society or politics. From an outsider perspective, I could see why they avoided us, we would dominate and crush anyone in our path that we considered unworthy of being amongst the fae. That meant that perhaps she saw herself as worthy of being in our ranks or she had some other motive where her distrust of our kind was outweighed by her goals. Either way, I was very interested in why she had so boldly put herself in our path.

“Once I was of age, I was given the choice of several offers to train soldiers for various kingdoms and I opted to travel to different ones once I felt that I had done all I could do and trained a replacement the kingdom could hold onto and utilize in my absence. I could have stayed at any one of them and lived a well cared for and comfortable life, but every time I thought about maybe I had found a place I would be happy settling into, some royal always got it in their head that they had wooed me enough to stay and started to treat me like a tool of war. They would start bristling at other kingdoms and start fights for land or resources assuming that I would be willing to don the battle robes and be their secret weapon. Luckily, I refused to make any oaths or sign anything keeping me in their kingdom so it was always simple enough to pack my things and move onto one of the other many offers I had.”

“You had the pick of things because you are so much more powerful than your brethren,” the seeress said, nodding affirmation to her own question.

“Life is easy when that is true,” the demon agreed with a shrug of her shoulders, “though I was not quite as powerful then as I am now, there was only so much even the best of the demon trainers could teach me as a child and then my potential was somewhat stunted as I traveled around during my younger adult years. I did make some progress with self study and exploration, but there was only so much I could figure out on my own.

One evening, when I was probably around my twenty-fifth year, I had made the decision it was time to move again. Not only was the king posturing to start a war with a nearby kingdom, but he was also keen on the idea that I might marry his eldest son. That would have put me in the position to be a queen consort which I suppose most women would envy, but I have no interest in the complicated politics that would thrust me into. I had enough of that training and I liked even less the idea that the only reason they wanted me as his bride was that our children might also be powerful mages. I didn’t trust them to let me go peacefully, so I slipped out through the dungeon tunnels in the middle of the night with nothing but my personal belongings in a pack and upon opening the exit door into the night air, I almost ran face first into Feros.”

Ana let out a sigh that the emotions behind were hard to place. It sounded a bit sad, but there was also longing. Like she both wished that the meeting had never happened and was happy remembering that it had.

“He looked more demonic back then, I think he assumed that is what I wanted from him. He was pretty insistent upon our first meeting that we were destined to run into each other and fall in love. That he had just so happened to be out on a walk that night and it was fate. Looking back now I know I was just a fool for a pretty face and probably being manipulated magically into falling for him as hard as I did. He was promising me the world though, a life where he would teach me everything I wanted to know about magic and I wouldn’t have to be anyone’s tool of war anymore.”

The seeress leaned forward in her chair again and a look of wonder crept across her features. “You’re talking about the goblin aren’t you?”

Ana nodded her head and let out another soft, husky laugh. “He did not mention that is what he was until far into the relationship, though I was not naive and figured out that he was some kind of strange creature and not a demon early on. I think he did not trust me with that bit of information until he felt that I had been fully entangled with him, in fact if I recall correctly it was not until after I gave birth to our child that he decided to tell me everything.”

The room went silent and I could feel the tension between Emmi and I. The foul creature had reproduced? That was not something either of us had even considered. Most creatures could not reproduce outside of their own kind and there certainly were not any of his kind around for it to have been considered a threat.

“It was a surprise for us too,” she said with a sad glint in her eye. “If you are worried about that, don’t be, our son died at the hands of fae long ago. Feros put him in a position to be found out, stupidly hoping he would be some sort of help for him to get some sort of revenge for what happened for his family.” She swept a tear away with her surprisingly delicate hand and shook her head, looking up at the ceiling like it might hold the rest of the tears in. “By the time I knew what they had gone to do, it was too late to find them to stop them. I tried, but I couldn't realm walk as quickly as they could. Elis was just about as powerful as his father and idolized him, willing to do anything he said they should. He had bought into the idea that his lineage needed to be avenged instead of hiding away, I still have no idea why Feros thought that two of them would make any meaningful difference.”

“You can realm walk?”

I grimaced slightly as the seeress immediately perked up at that part of the story. It was indeed important and surprising information, but the woman was obviously hurting as she recounted her past. There was a reason fae were seen as cold and unfeeling.

“I can,” Ana said as she slowly lowered her eyes from the ceiling, tears still glittering but currently held at bay, “I might be the only demon that knows how. It is a secret I have been sure to keep.”

The seeress turned her attention to me, a big smile on her face. “I see now why you have taken her into our ranks. She will be a fantastic study and a wealth of information.”

“I don’t care what you do with me,” Ana said quietly, “I only ask that you help me track down Feros and destroy him. I do not care that you despise the type of creature he is or any history his kind has with yours, I only care that he killed the part of my soul that was my son. I cannot stand living knowing he walks free and alive after knowingly walking him into his death. Once that is done, do with me as you will with me.”

“Usually our prisoners of war do not get to make their own terms,” I commented, “but in this case I think they already align with our own goals. Though we do need to retrieve the girl first. I will be more than happy to have you help us get your revenge after that.”

With a quick moment of thought, she bowed her head in acceptance. “I know a bit about the girl and who might have taken her. I will be glad to help you swiftly retrieve her so that we can find Feros.”

“We will discuss more about this foul creature after we march on where you think the girl is next,” I decided.

“I can’t wait to figure out how you can realm walk.” The seeress had a new fascination with Ana, her face in awe that a demon could possess the capability to perform such a high level magical skill. “The sheer magical forces should tear you apart.”

“It feels like it does every time,” Ana admitted. “It is not something I do often or enjoy doing.”

“Fascinating. Would you please travel with me? I would like to pick your mind a bit and test your limits while we march.”

Ana agreed, looking tired, like recalling her past had been physically taxing as well as emotionally. I could not help but feel a little bad for her.

“Meals should be arriving soon, then we will leave after we decide what to do with this king. He did knowingly keep the girl from us.” I looked to Ana to indicate I wanted her opinion on the matter.

“I don’t believe he actually wanted anything to do with her and in fact tried to get rid of her as soon as he discovered what she was. Feros had convinced him he had it under control and she could be used as some sort of bargaining chip,” the demon explained. “The king is a fool and I’m inclined to believe that Feros likely had some sort of blackmail on him to get him to agree to something he so obviously should not have done. I think if you release him he will do everything in his power to never deal with anything related to the fae again.”

“It is customary to kill captured leaders after they are interrogated,” Emmi reminded me, quite needlessly since as a commander I was more than familiar with the standard expectations of battle.

“We both know I don’t always comply with what is customary,” I said sharply. “I will decide what we do before we march.”

I did not know if she was doing it on purpose or simply had not realized, but the more she pushed me into doing what was expected, the more I wanted to do the opposite. She was a seeress, not someone who could ever been mistaken for naive or stupid, there was something going on, but that would be have to be added to the laundry list of threads I needed to pursue. This mission started as a simple task of retrieving a little girl, now I was being pulled in multiple directions and finding unbelievable situations as it progressed. I was not one to much believe in fate or predestined events, but there was something about this whole situation that made me feel a bit uneasy, like this had been planned to play out the way it had.

“As you wish,” the seeress said tersely, her mouth drawn into a narrow line of disapproval.