I knew as soon as I landed on the roof of a run-down house - Dantae was in this city. Bella had apparently put too much gusto into her leap, and was struggling to stabilize herself on the edge of the roof, while Hazeel stepped through calmly behind me.

“Stop messing around Bella.” Hazeel grabbed the demoness by the back of her clothes and gently balanced her.

“Thanks Haze!” Bella beamed at the confused wood elf, who looked over to me for reassurance. I had heard Bella shorten her name as well, but right now I needed to focus.

This was the only part of the city that had no living being inside of it, and therefore, perfect to infiltrate from. Why it was abandoned, I couldn’t say, but it worked out well for our purpose. The real question here was why I could sense living beings, but not Dantae?

Why couldn’t I sense her from outside of the city? Could the large walls of Songrande have something to do with negating detection abilities? Regardless, I needed to exercise caution. Dantae’s “aura” was inside the castle, but that didn’t mean that I could just waltz in and take it.

For all I knew, Dantae’s blade was being heavily guarded, or being experimented on at this very moment. Her material was something we never found on earth, and I doubt this world had any compound similar. Before I would have just taken it by force, despite any resulting consequences. Although I still believed I wouldn’t be bested in a one-on-one fight, the power of numbers is what did me in on earth, and cost Dantae everything.

Caution would be my best friend moving forward, and Hazeel’s knowledge of the city was a means to that end. “Leo, are you listening?”

I snapped out of my thoughts and stared at the demoness in front of me. Bella smiled as my eyes focused on her. “Haze said that we’re in the slums to the west of the castle, and that we need to head into the city to find our guilds.”

Bella threw on a hood that Jane had sewn onto her clothes the night before we left, and jumped from the roof and landed on a watermelon stall… or what looked like watermelons, anyway. Thank god the stall owner was away, because she crashed through the wooden roof and landed squarely on the melons with her feet.

Her speed and weight, combined with that of the wood she had just broken, smashed into the melons and left a bloodbath in the surrounding area. “Aw, my shoes!” Bella huffed while Hazeel stifled a laugh.

“Come on Bella, Hazeel. Let’s go.” I shook my head and leapt down after her, and Hazeel put on her own hood and followed my lead. I took one last look at the carnage left behind, and left one of the coins Jane had given me on top of the man’s stall. That should be more than enough to reimburse him for the damage, according to Jane.

With my conscience cleared, I followed after my strange company of a wood elf and a demon.

---

Brago stepped out from the damaged building that had been raided last night, and peered down the empty street, making sure Leon was long gone before he even stirred. The perimeter had been cleared out after a drug raid went south the night prior, and a chemical mage cast a large scale poison gas that was emitted from the house itself.

Brago himself had come as a representative of the King to assess the damage and calculate how much of the tax money they collected needed to be allocated to damage control. Still…

Brago looked at his hand, and looked at the pale purple crest who’s light was slowly fading. Even he, who currently boasted the highest vitality in the city, needed a toxicity resistance spell to even walk this deep into the fallout zone.

For those three to just casually appear, and not even feel the effects of the poison…

Brago shivered. Three monstrous beings had just appeared at their doorstep, and gods help whoever tried to stand in their way.

Picking up the coin that Leon had left for the stall owner, Brago started flipping it in his hands before surveying the melons that were on the ground. A reckless streak with no regard to the consequences…

The coin dropped as Brago pieced a line of thought together. They can’t be trying to undo the law banning demi-humans, can they?

“Oh gods, the king!” Temporarily forgetting himself, Brago cursed and realized exactly who could impede the progress of these three very dangerous individuals. He couldn’t let them meet! He just couldn’t!

Racing off to the castle, Brago held hope in his heart that meeting the king wasn’t first in Leon’s order of business.

---

We stopped in front of the Guild of Lust and walked inside the large, temple-like structure. “Are you sure this is the one you’ve chosen?”

Hazeel turned to Bella, who nodded her head wholeheartedly. “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I think it’s what I want to start out with. Plus, like you said, I don’t necessarily have to get the restricting crest unless I truly want to commit to the guild.”

She straightened up and took a deep breath as she stepped up to the massive twin doors. “Wait for me here… I’ll take care of this myself.

Hazeel and I watched her disappear into the building, and then sat on a bench that faced the Guild of Lust. She inched closer and closer to me, while glancing at me from the side of her eyes.

I sighed and prayed that Bella would come back soon.

---

Belladonna was excited. For the first time in her life, she had agency in her own skin. Every moment of her existence had been regulated or restrained by her grandma ever since her mom had died.

Granted, she did it for her own protection and safety, but she did it in such a way that Bella was bitter about it, and only recently let those feelings go.

Heart pounding and palms starting to sweat, she walked up to the receptionist - a slender woman in a provocative crimson dress - and stopped in front of her.

The woman, who had just noticed the newcomer, looked up from some papers she was processing and gave Bella a big smile. “Welcome. My name is Regin, one of the Lust Guild’s receptionists. How can I help you today?”

“M-m-my name is Bella Claire-” Bella stopped herself, realizing what ramifications using her true last name could have in Songrande, the place where her grandmother, Jane, had made a name for herself as one of the best mages in the continent.

“-Bella Claire. I’d like to register at this guild.” Regin gave her a quizzical look, but didn’t pry any further and handed her a piece of paper with an inkpad.

“Here’s the contract. Long story short, the only restrictions you’ll have to endure are not taking documents out of our information library, and if we learn that you’ve leaked any information to another guild, you shall be stoned to death.”

Regin said this last line with a smile, causing Bella to shiver. After reading it over to confirm what the woman said, Bella dipper her left thumb, index finger, and ring finger into the ink, and pressed them into the according slots.

Regin smiled beautifully as Bella handed her back the paper. “Thanks for your patronage! Now, as per the contract, in order to enter the library, you must give us one bit of news that we don’t have yet. Now, what is it?”

Bella hoped that her companions wouldn’t mind it, but she decided to take the plunge without their consent. Bella looked left and right to make sure no one was paying attention to her, then leaned in close to the beautiful woman. "The comet that landed out in the country wasn’t actually a comet. It was a man, and he is being taken care of by the exiled Jane Clairborne.”