Serenity was ready to head out now except for one thing. He had the same problem with his second form as he’d had when he was the Demon Thorn. What was he to do with it?

He couldn’t carry it as a crystal hilt as he’d done that time and he definitely couldn’t float along beside himself. Even ignoring the speed difference, the badger-demons could clearly see his Sovereign form and wouldn’t leave it alone.

The arguments against his armor-form still applied.

Serenity paused. Now that he thought about it, they didn’t actually apply, did they? He already looked very obviously different from the demon-badgers. He’d have to test how they reacted to him with armor on, but now that he thought about it, he needed to test how they reacted to him anyway.

Serenity’s chimera form took a couple of steps towards his demon form before he initiated the shift. It was easier when he was close.

The armor pattern Serenity chose was different from what he wore in his other forms; this form required free movement and all of the spikes needed to be in the open. On top of that, he wanted to restrict his fur as little as possible. He ended up with something that was little more than a harness over much of his body, but it still didn’t feel quite right. He was missing something; after a moment, he realized what.

Why was he trying to reveal his fur? He didn’t have to have scales as the exterior of his armor. He could allow his armor to become a secondary layer of weaponized fur. It wouldn’t be as protective as dragonscale, but it would be far more in keeping with his demonic form and it would alter his appearance far less.

The change felt better even though far more of his fur was pressed tightly against his body. He knew that he would grow warm quickly; it was a good thing that he had high Heat Resistance.

Serenity set off in the general direction of the city.

Demon-badgers were not hard to find as Serenity came closer to their city. He didn’t even have to go out of his way to find one that would pass too close to him. Serenity simply kept going. He didn’t feel any reason to move out of his path for the tiny creature; it wasn’t worth it.

When it noticed him, it changed its path to intersect with Serenity’s. He watched it coming at him, then swatted it away. The emotion he felt wasn’t anger; it was more like amusement at a child’s antics.

It was strange; he’d have expected that a demon of wrath would be angry. Perhaps it was simply that this wasn’t righteous, or that he’d already gotten plenty of retribution?

Serenity wasn’t sure.

Either way, he was pleased when the demon-badger picked itself up and headed away from him, just like it had been rebuffed by another demon-badger. He wasn’t going to have to fight his way through the city.

Five hours later, Serenity regretted his earlier optimism. He didn’t have to fight, that was true, but every single demon-badger that saw him threw itself at him once.

Every. Single. One.

Individually, they were negligible. A single swat and they were gone, picking themselves up from wherever they landed. Five hours of swatting had irritated Serenity to the point that he’d started having to restrain himself to avoid injuring the demon-badgers.

The only good news was that he was making excellent progress, traveling at least twice as quickly as he’d been able to before. In fact, Serenity suspected that he was now traveling faster than Andarit’s flyer.

Admittedly, Andarit’s flyer wasn’t all that fast.

Serenity set himself to putting up with the insolent spawn that kept bothering him. Killing them would be worse than pointless; without youth, there would be no future, and Lessers were always like that.

Even though it was dreadfully irritating, it had to be borne.

It didn’t occur to him that thinking about the demon-badgers as though they were actually children was strange.

Serenity made it out of the pile of rubble masquerading as a city of the Lesser Demons of Wrath a couple hours after sunset. The demon-badgers didn’t stop moving around at dark, which made it impossible for someone as large as he was to get any sleep inside the city. They’d just wake him up with their ineffective attacks.

Outside the city, it was easier to be unobserved long enough to create a hiding place and barricade it off for the night. The Lesser Demons of Wrath didn’t really care about anything they couldn’t see.

In the morning, Serenity was woken up by something large hitting the shelter he’d created. He took the long moments it required to shift from his dragon and hilt forms to his demon and armor forms, hoping he’d manage it in time.

He did, barely. Something large hit the shelter again and this time it broke through the weakened wall.

Serenity found himself staring at a winged, horned black and red humanoid plastered against the inside of his concealing dome. He’d clearly been flung through the other side but didn’t have enough force to penetrate the undamaged portion as well. He slid down the side of the dome and landed on the cleared ground. “What are you doing in my sleeping nest?”

This wasn’t a good way to wake up.

Even worse was when a fist as large as a human head grabbed the wall of the dome and pulled, breaking the hole torn by the involuntarily flying humanoid demon wider.

Serenity definitely wasn’t going to get to go back to sleep after that.

The hole wasn’t big enough for him to fit through but it was big enough for Serenity to see what had to be a minotaur reach in and grab another handful of dome, pulling it away. The bull-headed man was easily ten feet tall and wide to go with it, but that still meant he was far less bulky than Serenity. If Serenity stood on his rear legs, he’d be significantly taller, as well. Serenity didn’t expect that to be all that useful in this particular fight.

Serenity growled. Disturbing his sleep by being thrown into his nest was bad enough, but this demon was clearly the one who punched someone through the wall of his sleeping nest. And now he was continuing to destroy the nest.

Serenity lifted himself to his full standing height and shouldered enough of the damaged nest away to emerge from it. “Nest-destroyer!”

He heaved himself up and over the edge of the dome that hadn’t broken and started towards the minotaur.

The minotaur proved that he had just about as much in the way of brains as the stories said when he growled, lowered his horns, and charged towards Serenity just like a bull might.

Idiot.

Serenity moved to the side just far enough for the horns to miss, then shoved the minotaur sideways. Its posture was terribly unbalanced and it was clearly used to being the more massive in any fight it had, but Serenity had a distinct mass advantage this time.

The minotaur tipped over onto its side and skidded to a stop.

Serenity didn’t even slow down; his forepaws were on the nest-destroyer’s chest and head, so he extended his claws and tore them both open, followed by the neck. Serenity’s claws slid through skin, muscle, and bone like a knife through butter. The bones were a little difficult; to keep the analogy, both the knife and butter were cold. It still wasn’t anything he couldn’t manage by applying a little more force. It wasn’t much of a fight, but he hadn’t really expected much of the idiot brute.

There wasn’t anywhere to get the blood off his claws and paws. He’d have to take care of that later. He hadn’t finished with this encounter yet, after all.

Serenity poked his head back into the nest and looked at the demon who originally broke in. “You didn’t answer. What are you doing in my sleeping nest?”

The demon was still sprawled on the floor where he landed, gaping at Serenity. “Wrathborn? Talking and huge? I’m so dead.”

Serenity growled. He wanted an answer, not irrelevant commentary.

The demon slumped to the floor.

Serenity snorted. A demon shouldn’t be so weak as to faint after facing a little setback.

Serenity took the chance to dismiss the bed he’d slept on. He’d crushed it when he shifted, so it wasn’t obvious that it hadn’t been built for his demon form, but it was still better not to let it be seen. After a moment’s thought, he dismissed the rest of his nest as well. There was no need to advertise that the bed was special.

It probably didn’t matter, but in this case it might. The demon had seen him in here, after all, and apparently a “huge Wrathborn who can speak” was notable.

Serenity looked back at the winged demon. He’d opened his eyes again and was staring at Serenity with wide eyes, as though he couldn’t believe what he saw. Serenity snorted and turned away. He was awake; he might as well get started on the day’s travel.

“I was thrown through the wall.”

The voice from behind made Serenity stop and turn back to look at the demon.

He’d stood up, but was clearly unsteady on his feet. “I was thrown through the wall. That’s what you asked, isn’t it? Why I was in your sleeping nest?”

“Why?” Serenity’s curiosity won over his irritation for the moment. “Why did he throw you?”

The injured demon shrugged, then spoke rapidly. “He didn’t want to tell me stuff. I think he didn’t like to talk. But you like to talk! I’ve never gotten to talk to a Wrathborn before, most of your kind just attack, they don’t talk. Will you talk? Answer some questions? Where did you come from? I’ve never heard of a Wrathborn as big as you are.”

The injured demon had said everything with a single breath. Serenity was impressed but at the same time he understood why the Minotaur had thrown the demon. Probably at least twice, based on the impacts he’d felt. “No.”

Serenity turned away and started walking towards Mornmot.

There was a gasp from behind him; Serenity assumed it was from the injured demon noticing the dead minotaur. “You really are a Wrath demon! Why did you kill him? Was it hard? He really slapped me around; are you that much more powerful than I am? How did you get so strong?”

Serenity tried to ignore the questions and kept moving.

“Where are we going? Do you have a plan? Do Wrath demons even make plans? I always thought they didn’t but you’re heading away from the big wrathnest, aren’t you? Were you there to breed? Is that where new Wrathborn come from?”

Serenity groaned at the verbal diarrhea. Why was this demon so annoying? Why wouldn’t it just go away?

He couldn’t quite justify killing it; as annoying as it had been so far, Serenity couldn’t say it’d been worse than annoying. Being annoying didn’t justify a death sentence.

“What type of Wrathborn are you anyway? I’ve never heard of one that could speak or one anywhere near as large as you. I thought they always died from attacking something too tough for them, that not many ever got the chance to evolve. That’s why there are so many but they’re all so weak. Isn’t that true? But you show it’s not true, don’t you? Were you always in that city?”

Serenity stopped in place and looked over at the other demon. “Do demons like you usually die because they annoyed someone enough to kill them?”