Sister had fallen, and Joy had bolted out of the brush in an instant. He had been watching her with a careful eye as he ran, worried from the way that she kept swooning on her horse. Her face was too pale, too thin, and her eyes lacked focus. When she toppled, he had been by her side almost before she struck the dirt. The startled Malifori guards on the flanks hardly had time to react before his blurred form streaked across their ranks. Only one of them managed to snap out a hasty arrow, its head burying itself in the dirt, before he positioned himself protectively over Sister’s body.

The horses around him all bucked and tossed, kicking away from him in instinctive panic and fear. Their riders fought on the reins, but they could do little to calm their beasts. Joy ignored them all, turning instead to look at Sister. Her skin was pasty, sunken and sallow, and it was too cold despite the constant sun. Hurriedly, he sliced open a small cut on her arm with a claw, lapping up the blood that oozed through. It tasted sickly sweet, more so than the metallic tang blood usually had. Joy hissed in reflex, eyes flickering through the crowd that began to surround her. Poison, hissed the dead, crackling and popping like ice in his mind.

One of the Malifori approached on his horse, the animal tossing its neck but still inching forward nervously. His braids named him a chief, and he carried himself with presumptive confidence crossing into arrogance. “Leave her.” he spoke after a contemptuous look, waving his hand for the others to disperse. “We cannot slow our march for a single person.” They left with hardly a moment of thought, kicking up dust down the Kingsroad as their skittish mounts fled. Only a single man showed some hesitation, pausing awkwardly before riding over.

Joy recognized his face; he was the one who had given Sister the horse. He snarled as the Malifori approached, lips peeling back to reveal wickedly curved teeth. ‘Calm, boy.” the Malifori laughed nervously, fighting to keep the tremor out of his voice. Joy could see it in his stance, in the twitch in his fingers—it was all just posturing. There was fear flickering in the back of his eyes. “I don’t mean to hurt her. I just want to see.” he continued, raising up both palms like one might to a cornered animal.

Joy growled, a low rumbling that started in the back of the throat. “How can you help?” he forced out, holding the man’s gaze. The Malifori was startled and clearly taken aback, recoiling suddenly, the blood draining from his face.

“Y-you, can speak?” he stammered, licking his lips and looking around for anyone else. Most of the others had already left, the few remaining keeping a wide distance as they rode down the Kingsroad. In a few moments, it would just be them. “I d-didn’t realize…”

With a snarl, Joy rose onto his hind legs. He cracked his neck, stretching his limbs as he loomed over the Malifori. Baring his fangs and running his black tongue over his teeth, he hissed, “What do you. Want?”

The man flinched before straightening, gritting his teeth and steeling himself. “I just mean to help. If she’s overheated or needs water, I have things on my horse that can help.” He met the demon’s gaze calmly, unblinking. “I don’t mean to hurt her.” There was truth in those words. Joy could see it in his expression.

A low growl rumbled through his throat as Joy stepped away, allowing the Malifori to lean closer to Sister’s form. “Is poison.” he said gruffly as the man felt her cool skin. The Malifori blinked in shock, running a finger along her pulse.

“It could be. She’s so cold.” he muttered, feeling her forehead and limbs. “Seems like sugarleaf poisoning. But if it is, we’ll have to hurry. Once she starts to sweat on her own, it’ll be too late. We need to force her to sweat.”

“How?” Joy asked tersely, frustration making his blood race through his veins.

The man shook his head helplessly. “If we had hot stones, maybe. But without any way to start a fire quickly…”

Scion, hissed the dead, their voices roiling. You have power in your blood. Use it.

Joy paused before smiling, flexing his claws as he spoke. “Fire?” A pulse and a purpose, that was all he needed. Reaching inside of himself, he felt the mahji coiled up within him. It was like a vast pool, and he drew from it strands of purple that rose through his arms, coiling out of his claws. He remembered fire, from the heat that he had drawn out of the earth in the mountains. Fire was familiar to him; it was simple and strong, and he could understand it well. He willed a spark to catch on those serpentine ribbons, whispering, “Breathe.”

The flame drew in a deep breath, licks of red and orange dancing vibrantly as they sprung to life. In front of him, the Malifori suddenly recoiled, his features displaying shock and amazement. He spat out something that sounded rather like a curse before looking at the demon. “Miracles. You can bring miracles?” He swallowed before turning to Sister once more. “We need to take off her clothes. We need to draw out as much water as possible from her body.” Glancing up briefly at Joy, the man set to work peeling the leathers away from her clammy skin, cutting with a knife when some proved too tenacious. When her too-pale skin was exposed, he nodded at the demon to start.

Joy worked the flames, carefully bringing them closer to Sister’s skin. Those cordlike ribbons of fire wrapped around her flesh, hovering a finger’s length away from touching. Yet the heat billowed in waves, warming and scorching her body, and soon color was once more flushing to her face. Her breathing sped up as the smoke and steam filled the air, further driving the poison through her blood and hopefully into her sweat. And as she began to sweat, small droplets beading on her skin, Joy felt relief lift the clamps from his chest. He let out a long breath that he had been holding, still concentrating on keeping the flames under control.

As the fire burned the water of her sweat away, there was a white powder that was left behind on the skin. “Stop.” spoke the Malifori after a long period of silence, gesturing for Joy to put the flames out. He did so with the sensation of dropping long-held weights, feeling the strain and effort suddenly disappear from his mind. Despite the mahji that he had used, that massive pool inside of him felt as though it had hardly been touched.

Truly powerful, scion. You have inherited Andahiel’s will and strength. The dead writhed in pride, in a seething arrogance.

Joy could not help but wonder who this Andahiel was that they kept speaking of, yet he could only resolve to do so later. The Malifori was drawing in close, using a length of cloth torn from an undershirt to wipe the powder from her skin. “Sugarleaf dust.” he muttered, his features twisted with disgust and dismay. “What coward would do this?”

“Coward?” Joy asked, leaning down and carefully sniffing her skin. It still held tinges of that distinctive sweetness, stronger than honey and too sickly to be mistaken for anything else.

The Malifori shook his head, scowling as he stood up. “Poison is a woman’s weapon. No true warrior would use it in place of a bow.”

Joy did not understand. A blade was a weapon. A bow was a weapon. A poison was a weapon. They were all tools, much as a bucket and a cup both held water. The anger that boiled in his chest was not from poison. It was not from the tool. It was from the hand that had used it. That someone had tried to kill Sister. She was his pack, his family—his only family. All these damnable people on their horses were not worth nearly as much as she was, and he would butcher all of them and burn their corpses if that was what it took to save her.

The more that he thought about it, the more that his heartbeat sped until his vision began to bleed with hints of red. Blood rage, some part of him noted dully, yet it was a small voice in a tempest. His breathing grew heavy, his muscles tensing as he felt the urge to kill pound through him. It had happened before, but it had been for him. This time, it was for her sake, and the anger that burned felt magnitudes stronger.

Someone put a hand on his chest, and he snapped at it reflexively with his jaws. They clamped down on empty air, teeth clacking violently as they struck nothing. Before he knew it, there were hand on his horns, gripping him as one might a struggling beast. They fought him, held him steady as he wrestled and tugged. He shook his head, feeling anger course through him as he struggled to buck this thing off, yet it held fast.

“Calm, ma seh’va!” something shouted in his ear. “Calm!” Those words were loud and piercing, cutting through his battle haze and tearing apart the film over his vision. Blinking rapidly, Joy saw the Malifori before him, his expression stern and challenging. “Calm.” he repeated, and slowly Joy felt his bloodlust begin to abate. After a few breaths, he blinked and stepped back.

It was not until after he looked up that he saw the Malifori panting heavily, his face flushed as his expression one of relief. “I was not expecting that to work. I was expecting a hole in my chest.” he gasped out, smiling tiredly as he fell onto the dirt. “But if she was poisoned, it was most likely Ahtoka. Only he is bullish enough to want to kill her, and weak enough to use poison.” He looked over at Sister’s sleeping figure before throwing his head back. “We need to catch up with the others. Here, help me bring her over to her horse and we’ll figure something out.”

It was with an awkward difficulty that they secured her onto the beast, partly because it kept acting skittish whenever Joy drew near. Once she was lashed firmly onto the saddle, the Malifori held her horse’s reins in one hand as he got onto his own. Seeing that Joy had taken off into the vegetation, he pressed his heels into his horse and started off down the Kingsroad to follow his people.

Joy tore through the brambles and underbrush with a bestial intensity, ignoring the thorns and broken branches as they scraped against his scales. He was utterly intent on reaching the Malifori camp and tearing out the throat of her poisoner. The blood rage bubbled within him, and he fought to preserve his faculties as he ran. His heart raced, his heartbeat thumping in his skull, and in his distraction a low hanging branch caught him across the muzzle. He snapped through it savagely with his teeth, shaking his head back and forth before throwing it to the side and continuing. The pain served only to further his rage, and he wrestled with himself to remain calm.

Horses, for all their apparent weakness, were well-suited for speed on the open road. Joy found himself unable to catch up to the Malifori despite his efforts, and it was dusk when he saw the mass of people beginning to set up tents in the grass along the side of the Kingsroad. Sister and the other Malifori were not far behind, pulling into the side tiredly. Joy stayed hidden in the underbrush as he dismounted, clapping his horse to go eat as he walked into the camp. His eyes searched the vegetation as he walked, and Joy started a small tongue of flame from the tip of his claw. The Malifori man noticed quickly, letting a small smile slip across his face in acknowledgement as he strode towards a surprised group of his people.

They spoke in hushed whispers, and Joy could not quite make out their words, yet soon another man came out of a tent, his expression one of shock and anger. Joy recognized him—the one they called Ahtoka and Sister’s poisoner. He felt hot wrath start to bleed into his vision once more, and he fought to stay silent as the two walked out of camp. The first was luring Ahtoka, he could tell, and their arguing served as useful distraction. Joy caught their words in the wind as they approached.

“—assa he’en. You were one who supplied her horse. You were the one that gave her food and water. Those are Chief’s commands; it is known.”

“And what does that mean, Hatsura? What are you accusing me of?”

“You already know it. You poisoned her, Ahtoka. You fought her with a woman’s arrows.”

There was a pause before an ugly smile crept across the Malifori’s face. “Aye, I did. And she was a woman, so what of it, dar’a khalei? She is dead. She was weak.”

Those words were enough for Joy, and he let his blood rage swallow him as he burst out of the underbrush. The man did not even have time to turn before fangs clamped shut around his throat. Scarlet blood sprayed like a fountain as he screamed, until his cords were torn in a savage motion. The two fell onto the ground from the force of Joy’s charge, and the demon buried his claws into the man’s chest. With a prying motion, he heard bone crack and splinter as he forced the rib cage open, exposing punctured viscera underneath. The man was dead in nearly an instant, yet that did not stop Joy from plunging his muzzle into the mess of organs, tearing out the still-beating heart and swallowing it with a jerk of the neck.

And as he stepped back to admire the ruined corpse before him, a savage smile crept across his bloodied face.