“Come on Biscuit! You’re all grimy from what happened in Treount. Let me clean you-bleh!” Bella fought the newly named Biscuit’s tail as she tried to brush caked blood and soot out of the horse’s coat.

We had stopped at a small lake on the side of the single dirt path that would eventually lead us to Songrande. We had yet to encounter another living being, save for some rabbits that unfortunately found themselves on our plates earlier in the morning.

I walked over from the caravan to a log on the lake’s shore that Hazeel was sitting on, watching Bella with a curious gaze.

“So… how are you feeling?” I sat down next to her and turned to face the wood elf. Her silver hair blew wildly in the wind coming off of the lake, revealing her ovular ears. There was a green ring pierced through the top of her right ear.

Hazeel glanced at me for the umpteenth time over these past two days. It wasn’t really too strange. Following our escape from the cannibal’s village, she had questioned me endlessly about the void, and about how my mastery over pocket dimensions and spatial rifts could be so high.

However, by refusing to answer her I had unwittingly activated the blood contract and prevented Hazeel from asking anything further, which was the root cause of the glare directed my way.

She took a bottle of alcohol, which I recognized from the kitchen of Treount’s inn, and started to sip it slowly. She must have still had some bitter feelings. The blood contract seemed to be a fickle thing, and I’d have to be careful of what I said and did from now on.

“Do you really want to know about me that badly?” My question must have caught her off guard, because she spit out the drink into the lake.

“Hazeel, manners.” Bella remarked before Biscuit’s tail slapped her in the face again, causing Hazeel’s face to redden.

“Sorry about that, I just wasn’t expecting that question. The truth is, I don’t know. I admittedly might have been a little hasty in making myself subordinate to you, but… but… you make me feel a certain way that I haven’t felt in a long time. And I just felt like I could feel that again if I stuck around you.”

Hazeel started to lean into my shoulder, causing me to tense up. Unfortunately, she saw that and rolled her eyes before walking into the lake to join Bella in washing Biscuit the horse.

I sighed, knowing that this awkward feeling between us of uncomfortable slave and unwilling master wasn’t going to go away until we talked it out… and talked about each other.

---

As it turns out, refusing to acknowledge an inquisitive mind for two days really dampens your relationship with someone. As night fell on the lake, Bella had collected all the scarce dry wood she could find on the shoreline and built a campfire on the rocky shore.

“Leon, grab the boar meat grandma packed for us from the caravan and bring it here please. Oh, while you’re at it, grab a carrot for biscuit!” I left Bella to tend to the fires and trudged towards our inventory. I didn’t even know what I was doing anymore. Did I really need Jane and her connections to find Dantae? Would I have such a difficult time getting information from the guilds if I tried to strong-arm them?

I drew back the cloth to reveal Hazeel sleeping next to the food I was supposed to get. Sighing, I climbed up the back of the caravan and stepped over her as quietly as I could. A cold sensation assaulted my leg, causing me to jump and hit my head on the roof.

“Hahaha, guess even you can be surprised after all.” I looked down at Hazeel, who had grabbed my leg. Her smiling face overlapped with Dantae’s for a brief moment and I shook my leg free of her grasp.

“What is it, Hazeel? If you were awake, why wouldn’t you just say so?” I continued farther in and grabbed the basket our food for the night was in before turning to leave the caravan.

On my way out I was stopped once again when Hazeel grabbed my hand. I turned to look at her, but she had averted her gaze. We were silent for a good while before she finally looked up at me and started to speak.

“Leon, can you please tell me why you’re so reluctant to treat me as a companion, even when I went as far as to completely submit myself and my freedom to you? I could understand if I was someone who you had no control over, or someone who was clearly so much stronger than you that I could overwhelm you with a single swipe, and could ignore the effects of the blood contract. Since neither of those are true, I guess I’m just confused as to why you refuse to trust me.”

I put down the meat and vegetables and sat next to her. “I asked you before, but do you really want to know about me, my story, my struggles, and my journey, that badly?”

This time, instead of being caught off guard, she answered me with resolute eyes and a smile on her face. “Yes, yes I do.”

I looked up at the ceiling of the caravan, smiled, and began speaking. “Well, it all started for me back at the planning phase of the Doppelganger experiment. My mother was a scientist, and my father was equal parts insane.”

---

A couple hours later, I returned my gaze from the ceiling to Hazeel, who had started tearing up.

“That’s so messed up Leon… no, I suppose I should call you Leo now, huh?”

“Only when we’re alone.” I reminded her, “I do have enemies on the other side who can hop dimensions as I have, plus with the technology they have over there, I’m sure they’re growing by leaps and bounds as well.”

I heard sniffling outside and turned to see Bella, who was bawling outside. “Damn it Leon! Give me those!” She snatched the food from my side and started walking back towards the campfire.

“I came to give you a piece of my mind for being late and you turn me into an emotional wreck! Come on, you guys can finish your heart to heart at the campfire.” Just as she had mentioned it, my stomach had started to rumble, and a small gurgle could be heard from Hazeel’s as well.

“Ha, I guess we lost track of time huh?” Hazeel smiled and took my hand before getting out of the caravan. “Come on, this time it’s my turn to share with you.”

---

Hazeel and I walked back towards the lake as Bella had just begun preparing the meat.

Hazeel sat beside me on a beached log, and paused as we listened to the sounds of crickets and the crackle of the fire as Bella cooked for us and fed Biscuit.

I turned to Hazeel and put a hand on her head. “You don’t have to share your story with me, if it makes you uncomfortable to bring up the past, you know."

Hazeel smiled at my sympathy, and put her hand on top of my own, causing me to look at her quizzically. Hazeel exhaled. “It’s alright, if you can open up to me about your past, I can do the same with mine.”

We sat in silence for a few moments before Hazeel took a deep breath and exhaled once more.

“My ‘story’ started after I left the goblin village to enlist in the royal army. Back then I wasn’t known as Hazeel the Conqueror, but as just plain Hazeel.”

---

Hazeel trudged through the wilds on her way to the capital of the Azure Continent, Songrande. It had been nearly a month, and she was getting tired of the nuances and trivialities of road life. Sure, in her time traveling, she had amassed wealth just by slaughtering those bandits who thought a woman traveling alone was an easy target, but the fact that she had no way to send it to the plateau back home meant that it was just weighing down her pockets.

To think, she had just turned twenty only a couple of months ago, and now she was expected to follow an ancient tradition that would strip her freedom under a blood contract and force her to toil away in a city doing minimum wage non-suspicious jobs so she could send money back to her village.

As if.

At the first chance she got while being scheduled for solo patrol around the village, she escaped into the woods and made her way down the plateau.

Hazeel had felt guilty at first, but realized the only thing that could save her from the constructs of forced Goblin servitude was her own willingness to leave, and her dreams of becoming more than a normal person.

“Missy, are you headed somewhere?” Hazeel jumped and drew her sword at the voice behind her, who happened to be riding on a massive warhorse. A woman with a plentiful figure, and long, black demon horns looked down on her from her mount.

“Jumpy, aren’t we? Stand down men.”

Looking behind the woman, Hazeel began to tremble as an army frontline of twenty strong went back into rank and lowered their rifles that had been pointed at Hazeel’s chest. “So, what are you doing out here, girl?”

The woman continued to look down on Hazeel, who kneeled and put her head down to the woman. “My name is Hazeel, and I’m traveling to Songrande to look for work.”

“Lift your head, it was a simple question. Excuse my men, they’re just a little trigger happy since we just returned from a minor skirmish a week ago.” Hazeel lifted her face and once again took in the sight of the demoness, who was wearing light armor and wielded a jet-black scythe.

“No, I apologize, I’m at fault. I’ve been assaulted by bandits so many times on this trip that it’s become second nature to me to always have one hand on my hilt.” The woman smiled at Hazeel, and got down from her horse.

“You were able to fight off them all by yourself? That’s impressive.”

“Not fight off, kill.” The woman tapped a finger to her lips. “You didn’t happen to get any identification, did you?

Hazeel smiled and took off her backpack, revealing the well-preserved heads of three men. “I tried my best to keep them from decaying, even though I only know minor ice-magic.”

The woman studied the faces before beckoning a soldier over to her to take the heads. “We’ll see if these match up to the depictions of any on our wanted list. You can travel back to Songrande with us in the meantime. I know, you can be the guard for our supply carriages.”

The woman took Hazeel’s hand and helped her stand. “Thanks for killing those bandits, you’ve done these lands a great deal. I’m currently a general in Songrande’s Imperial Army. My name is Jane Clairborne, let’s get along, Hazeel.”