When Igneous returns, the first thing I have him do is go see Rose to heal his wing. After that, he reports what he found during his mission. He showed me everything he saw, or at least the things that were actually important. On his way back, he had stopped at the smaller settlement just to confirm the identity of its inhabitants as well.
It was a risk to get so close, but it was late in the night and the moon was not out at the time so the darkness covered his approach. He perched on top of one of the buildings and watched the street below. There were not many people out at that time of night, so he had to wait a while, but eventually, he saw a pair of them walking together, illuminated by street lights.
This was my first time seeing what I presume to be vak. William was not exaggerating when he called their resemblance to humans ‘remarkable’. From where Igneous viewed them on his rooftop perch, the only obvious differences were the red tone to their skin and small horns on their forehead, but beyond that, they do not look all that different. One could possibly even mistake them for humans if glimpsed at a distance. It is fascinating that creatures from two different worlds could evolve to be so similar; an interesting example of convergent evolution.
I am concerned at the proximity of vak controlled settlements, I did not expect them to be so close. Is this something I should mention to William? No, it is probably not necessary to do that. Fortified towns and cities do not just appear overnight, it takes time to construct something like that and they looked pretty well established in the images Igneous showed me. They have surely been there long enough for the humans to already be aware of them.
I do have another task for Igneous, but want to give him some time to rest before sending him on another extended mission. I had wanted to organise a more thorough scouting mission of the town with the fruit orchards, but with everything that has been happening lately, it has fallen to the wayside. But with the way things are now, I believe it is even more important to prepare a place to go, should it become necessary, which is now seeming increasingly likely.
I plan to send Rose this time so she can investigate the crater to possibly find an explanation for the higher mana density there and also just to get her perspective on the area in general. When she is not busy, I consult with her to plan the expedition.
Once Igneous has rested, I would like to send you to explore the town he and Violet scouted previously.
“Is there something specific you want me to look for?” She asks.
Apart from looking into the crater, I want to know more about the surrounding environment and any potential threats or dangers that might have been missed the first time.
“Will it just be me and Igneous?” Rose inquires.
That is what I wanted to ask your opinion on. If it is just the two of you, performing a thorough investigation could take a while, but Igneous would be able to fly you there, like he did with Violet. If you went with a group, it would be much easier to properly investigate the area, but Igneous would not be able to carry you, so you would have to travel on foot.
“How long do you think it would take to get there as a group?”
It is hard to say. It took Igneous about half a day to fly there while carrying Violet, but it would depend on how fast imps move when traveling over long distances.
“That’s mostly determined by the terrain.Thinking about how fast he flies, it's hard to imagine it taking less than a couple of days, at least, to go the same distance over land; probably more.”
I recommend a group expedition for this. Despite the longer travel time, it will make conducting a proper search easier and since one of the objectives is specifically looking for potential dangers, having a group will be safer.
“I agree. Will I be choosing the group again?”
If you want to.
“When will we leave?”
I will discuss it with Igneous later, so you have some time to decide who you want to take with you.
“Alright, I’ll give it some thought.”
In the meantime, shall we summon another teleporting imp?
I had planned to wait longer, to give the previous one time to adjust, before summoning more, but she is adapting much faster than Coal did. Though she has the benefit of having someone who she can actually speak to to teach her how things work here, something Coal did not have when he first arrived.
I have observed some interesting things while observing the two of them interacting. I do not understand their language, though maybe I should try to learn it if I am going to be summoning more of them, but that makes it more noticeable when Coal uses Balkret words in their conversations, sometimes for simple things. It makes me wonder if they do not have words for those things in their own language
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When they were discussing her name, Coal repeatedly used the Balkret word for ‘name’, which surprised me a little. Even though the red imps do not typically have names, they still know the word at least. Is it possible that for the teleporting imps, names are such a foreign concept that they do not even have a word for it in their language?
As for her name, after giving it some thought, I decided to follow a stone and mineral theme, since I named the first one ‘Coal’. To better go along with the theme, I will focus on stones that are typically black, or at least can appear as black, so I am calling her ‘Onyx’.
‘Magic’ is something else Coal used the Balkret word for, which was a little more surprising. From the conversations I have had with my other imps about the places they came from, it seems like magic is quite common in their world. Even if imps cannot normally use magic themselves, they at least know what it is. So it is baffling that they would not have some word of their own for it.
Maybe I am simply misinterpreting things and he was actually just trying to teach her the Balkret words for those things, but their tones and facial expressions when there were talking about them did not give that impression. Besides, if he wanted to teach her what he knew of Balkret, that seems like an odd place to start.
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Less imps gather around this time, not wanting to risk getting caught up in the fight like some of them did yesterday. Unlike last time, Rose has her hammer and we move the bone pile to the edge of the room to remove it as a trip hazard in preparation for the inevitable battle to come.
The new imp that appears is male with similar height, build and skintone to Coal. One stark difference though is the presence of numerous black scars across his body. One long, thick scar runs from his right shoulder to the center of his chest. In a few places on his back, there are smaller scars of varying lengths, the most prominent of which has four clear lines running in parallel across the left side of his lower back; it is not hard to guess what caused those. There are also several more black scars decorating both forearms.
Violet raises her shield and Rose tightens her grip on her hammer, waiting for him to make any sudden moves, though Rose’s eyes are tracing the scar on his chest.
Like the two that came before him, he turns to Violet first. He tries speaking to her, but obviously she does not understand. Coal and Onyx step in to speak with him instead and after what appears to be an animated discussion, he approaches Rose. She looks up at him and raises her hammer, prepared to defend herself should it become necessary.
“Not want fight,” Coal declares.
Rose narrows her eyes and peers at him suspiciously, but he does not attack. Rather, he takes a moment to look her up and down and then nods to her, before returning to Coal and Onyx who begin showing him around.
Well, that was anticlimactic.
“Yeah, I was expecting a repeat of yesterday,” Rose replies.
Do not let your guard down yet though, he may still challenge you later, he might just be waiting to learn more about you first.
“What makes you think that?” She inquires.
His scars; they suggest battle experience. And an experienced warrior would be less likely to recklessly charge into battle against an opponent they know nothing about.
“The scars were a surprise. Imps don’t usually scar easily, so it takes pretty serious injuries to leave a permanent mark. The one on his chest is especially remarkable. It’s hard to believe he could even survive the wound that caused it. So you think he just wants to see what I can do before trying to fight me?” Rose ponders.
Obviously, I do not know if that is what he is actually thinking, I am just considering the possibilities.
Violet follows the teleporting imps as Coal and Onyx show the new one around. Coal is doing most of the talking to explain things, but after Onyx was summoned, Violet decided that she also wanted to try learning their language, so she is listening intently and I do the same.
I decide on the name ‘Jet’ for the new imp while I follow them. His reaction upon seeing the hellhounds is probably the most interesting so far. Coal and Onyx’s first reactions had been to growl and prepare to fight, but Jet teleports away to hide behind the door. But judging from the way he peeks around the door and observes them with a calculating glare, I do not think he is hiding out of fear, but instead is planning how to attack them.
Thankfully, Coal convinces him not to do so and that the hellhounds are safe to be around. Jet tentatively rejoins the others as Violet flings herself towards the smallest of the hellhounds, pressing herself as deeply as she can into Fuzzy’s fur. Violet abandons the tour at that point, electing instead to stay and play with Fuzzy as the other three move on.
On the roof, he is introduced to the gargoyles and looks baffled for a moment at the two large rocks. He immediately teleports away, outside of my field of vision, as soon as one of the ‘rocks’ starts moving.
After that, the three of them head outside, where I can no longer observe them. I am glad Coal now has others that he can converse with now. Even though he is doing great with learning Balkret, it still must be a relief to have someone he can speak to in his own native language.
But that reminds me of the other imp I have that does not speak Balkret. I gave her the name ‘Hana’, which I think comes from another human language and also means ‘flower’. I thought it was a clever idea, but too bad none of the imps understand the context to appreciate it.
She has also been doing her best to learn, which has been aided by the gargoyles and how they seem to be unaffected by any sort of language barriers. Perhaps I could also try to summon another imp for her to talk to, but I am not entirely sure how to do that.
Obviously, I can target specific traits when summoning, but so far I have only targeted physical traits. Can I summon someone based on the language they speak, especially when I do not even understand the language myself? But that is not the only concern; I did not even know there were red imps who spoke other languages before I summoned Hana. There could be even more languages out there and if I end up summoning an imp that speaks yet another different language, I would simply be compounding the problem.
Perhaps I could try introducing her to Cassandra. Even if the only demon language she has learned is Balkret, if we are lucky, she might at least be able to identify it and confirm whether or not it is the language of the sucubirus as I have previously suspected. Any additional information I am able to glean might help.
The opportunity to do so presents itself later in the same day as we are once again visited by William and Cassandra. Those are the only two who came up the stairs, but my look outs on the roof report that they did see other humans carrying some boxes from their car into the building.