Dear Arenya,

How are things going? I know I was over at your school not that long ago, but there’s some important stuff going on I gotta know about. I’d stop by in person but I don’t have the option right now.

I heard some weird stuff from ■■■■■■■■■ my parents. You, or a friend of yours… yelled at someone at a Great Feast? What happened? That person is ■■■■■■■■ a friend of my family. They’re not happy. I think it’s dumb, but my bosses my parents care quite a lot about this. They, umm… don’t want me going to help out your parents anymore. Too concerned I’ll “pick up bad habits from the Followers” or something ridiculous like that.

I heard a bit about your sword. Called Shomer or something like that? Apparently it’s really unique and has some interesting designs on it.

■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■

My parents heard about it and want to know. What are the designs on it? What do they mean? There’s something funny about how the channels were made - can you tell me about that? I think if they get the answers, they may lighten up on me and let me get back to the farm.

This may be my only letter for a while, even if you get back to me. But if you can get me the answers to what happened with that woman at the feast and what’s up with the sword, that might help out some.

- Daniel

By the way, they keep mentioning some guy named Drav. I’ve heard of him. Do you know him?

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“…What?”

“That’s what it says, Cartalis.” Arenya shrugged. “I know. It makes no sense.”

Arenya stared at the letter. Drav, Zelzad, Cartalis, and Ya’el sat in around the table in the all-but-empty dining hall, exchanging concerned glances.

“Ugh,” muttered Cartalis. “Classes resume in but two days. Now is not an auspicious time for dealing with strange crises such as this.”

Zelzad gestured for the letter. Arenya passed it to her. “Wow, you weren’t kidding. Half this thing is crossed out so hard you can’t even read what it said before.”

Cartalis rose, strode to Zelzad’s chair, and looked over her shoulder. “One of these was done poorly. You can still make out the writing, though faintly. ‘My bosses…’” Cartalis tsked. “I shall go out on a limb and suggest that several of the other excised portions said something similar. Replacing ‘bosses’ with ‘parents’. Someone has put Daniel up to this, and it was neither his mother nor his father.”

“How on Earth did he know about your sword?” asked Ya’el. “Did you tell him?”

“No,” said Arenya.

“You tell anyone outside the school about it?”

“My parents? They could have told him about it.”

“They didn’t,” said Cartalis. “If they wished to know about it, and he knew your parents were a source of information, they would have let him continue at the farm to obtain it.”

“That lady you yelled at,” said Zelzad. “If she and Daniel were friends… Did she seem like she was part demon or something? She was a Six worshiper, yeah? That’s not a common demon-ey thing to do.”

Arenya shrugged. “She didn’t look like a demon to me.”

“Any idea what relationship she might have had to Daniel?”

“Not a clue.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“This makes absolutely no sense,” said Ya’el.

“You can say that again.” Arenya put her head in her hands and sighed. “And he was doing such a good job helping out on the farm. The place is too big for just two sets of hands. My parents won’t be able to do nearly as well without him.”

Arenya stood. “I’ll go write a response. Shamir isn’t a secret, anyway. I’m fine letting his parents or bosses or whoever learn about him.”

“Permit me to look over the letter before you send it,” said Cartalis. Arenya could not quite tell if it was a question or a statement.

“I will,” said Arenya.

As she walked towards the dining hall’s exit, hoping the library had once again opened for the semester with its free collection of stamps, she realized she had forgotten one important aspect.

That last line… about Drav. Who were these people and how did they know about Drav?

And what did they know about Drav?

And why did Drav remain completely silent the entire time? Was that coincidence, or did he know something?

Arenya halted in place in the doorway. Birds chirped outside, and the grass was green…

She considered going back to ask him, but the day beckoned her. She wanted to enjoy her last days before break ended also.

She would go to the library, write the letter, grab a stamp, and find a nice place to relax outside. When she next saw Drav, she could ask him then. That would be fine.

This was probably nothing, anyway. It seemed a bit funny, but surely it was just a job of his with some annoying anti-Follower leader, and some word got out about the yelling and someone got on Daniel’s case. Not good, by any means, but nothing horrific either.

Still, a small part of her could not help but worry.

----------------------------------------

“Speak.”

Cartalis stared over the table at Drav. They had switched to a small room in one of the campus buildings, ostensibly because Cartalis wanted to ask Drav a question about the band’s storyline. A bold-faced lie, of course.

Drav looked a bit nervous. “Speak about what?”

Cartalis narrowed her eyes at him. She said nothing.

Better for hiding the indecision in the back of her mind.

Deep within herself was a… a bluntness. She called it The Fiery One. Others called it a callous, uncaring piece of herself that pushed others away. She didn’t wish for it. She didn’t entirely understand it, either. Time after time, she’d had to be taken aside, had it painstakingly explained to her why calling her siblings idiots wasn’t appropriate or why she couldn’t call their ancient family ritual a meaningless confusing mess in front of their houseguests, taught to push back against that part of herself, and eventually she’d learned to put The Fiery One to the side, to not listen to her. Her parents were proud of her great progress, and Cartalis was proud of it too.

Then school came, and Cartalis left her home city. Despite her success academically, the stress of being apart from where she had been raised was so significant, and the stress of dealing with so many vapid, meaningless “declarations of love” so tiring, that she’d let The Fiery One out once more.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

She remembered the look on one would-be-suitor’s face when she told them where they could stick their request. That she knew they only wanted her money and that they cared not one whit for her, and she could see through the charade without difficulty. The feeling of finally letting out that frustration was good.

She’d grown to relish The Fiery One at first, and then resent her. Certainly, after a time the money-obsessed idiots stopped bothering her, but so did, well, everyone. She’d gained a reputation for being impossible to approach, always studious and never rule-breaking, yet liable to fly off at another student for a perceived slight. Eventually The Fiery One led to her being the talk of the school and ignored at once. The irony of being called the Blond Ice Queen was not lost on her, but she did her best to never let show the pain that that name caused her, how much she hated the persona she’d deliberately built around herself.

And then, Arenya had arrived. A new leaf had turned. Cartalis could tell quickly that the two of them were both outsiders. She knew, somehow, that Arenya would not be pushed away by her reputation, that they could enjoy each other’s company without the gossip getting in the way. The draw she had felt was inexplicable, but she knew they could be friends.

And that had led further, somehow, to new friends as well. The Fiery One had gotten in the way, as she was ever wont to do, but eventually, with some practice, she’d managed to put her in the back of Cartalis’ mind where she belonged.

The Fiery One had not vanished, to be sure. She still broke free sometimes, or whispered strange ideas in Cartalis’ ear. Now Cartalis found herself doing strange antics, like when she broke into the graduate lab (a moment she’d laugh about with her grandchildren one day, she hoped), in part in order to let out some of the latent energy The Fiery One gave off that Cartalis had no other outlet for. But for the most part, she had been tamed. The Fiery One now came at Cartalis’ beck and call, for when she needed that burst of adrenaline or wanted to make it clear she was unwilling to take whatever the other person was giving.

But she’d grown incautious. At the Great Feast, she’d given The Fiery One far too long a leash. She’d torn into that woman, an act that Cartalis kept telling herself was just to protect Arenya, but she knew that was a lie.

And now she had to reap the consequences. Daniel was up to who knows what, but Drav was involved with him. She’d unwittingly taken her new friends, her greatest treasure for which her family’s old wealth was naught but dust, and pitted them against each other.

And now she sat here, staring Drav in the face, about to let The Fiery One out to play with him. As though she thought that was a good idea, and not at all liable to blow up in her face.

But for all that… She had to know. It was obvious that the letter had been badly censored on purpose. Whoever had written it, they wanted them to ask. Arenya, joy as she was to be around, was too naive to realize it. But Drav knew something, and whoever had written this letter wanted them to find out. The scrawling of Drav’s name looked like it was done in haste, however, perhaps at the last moment before the letter was sent. Unlike most of the letter’s idiosyncrasies, that appeared to be a genuine mistake, and Cartalis would capitalize on it.

If that meant flirting with releasing The Fiery One, so be it. Hopefully she could manage this without sabotaging all she had gained… But she found herself with no choice but to take the risk.

“You will speak.” She closed her eyes. “You know something about that letter and about what happened.” She prepared her best glare - one meant to cut through a person’s face, through their soul, and out the other side of their head. “Do not deny it.”

She opened her eyes. She could see Drav simultaneously sit up to look larger, and wither slightly beneath her gaze.

“I have no idea what’s going on.” Drav’s voice held the barest hint of a break in it. “So he knew my name. Whatever. What does that prove other than that someone there heard of me once? And anyway, it’s not like Drav is the rarest ever name for a part demon, right? It might have been a different guy.”

“How long do you wish to keep up your charade of ignorance?”

“Come on, Cartalis. If I tell you they’ll have my head.”

Cartalis let the glare recede some. “Ah. So there is indeed a ‘they’?”

Drav froze. His mouth moved up and down, as though he attempted in vain to speak. Eventually, he simply smacked his fist against the table and muttered “Dammit.”

Cartalis took a slow, deep breath. As she exhaled, The Fiery One receded. Her purpose was fulfilled, and the damage mercifully small.

Almost as though Drav wanted to be found out, to release whatever burden he was carrying.

She hoped, anyway.

“Care to discuss?”

Drav nodded. “Fine. I suppose it’s too late anyway. Promise me though, you won’t tell Arenya?”

At that, The Fiery One sent out one final spark, one that insisted she refuse. She bit it back. “I shall try.”

Would that she could hold herself to it. Provided he didn’t say anything too concerning, she could probably manage it. Perhaps she might even handle it herself and not worry Arenya any further.

Drav took a deep breath. “Daniel and I belong to a group. It’s small and pretty much all demons, though there’s a few who aren’t. We’re pretty small, still, but the group has been around for a few decades now.”

“Is Zelzad involved?”

“A little. She hasn’t been fully initiated yet, but she wants to be.”

“What kind of group is this?”

“We worship The Seventh. The one beyond The Six, and savior of demonkind.”

Cartalis had to physically bite down on her tongue to keep from crying out. Drav had just admitted to blatant heresy. A seventh god? A demonic god?

Foolishness, she knew, to react that way. After all, Arenya was a heretic, and that didn’t bother Cartalis one bit. And further, Cartalis was a heretic - she wasn’t convinced The Six even existed, and while her family had insisted she attend with them for services in her younger days, she’d gathered eventually that it was more for appearance and social decorum than out of any zeal for worship. She’d long since stopped paying attention when she was forced to attend, and the occasional swearing by one of The Six was the extent of her religiosity now that she attended Ba’al Cedric’s - a school started by yet another heretic, for that matter. And further, And further beyond that, she’d known the instant she laid eyes on Drav and his group that there was no way they followed The Six in any traditional fashion, and neither did most of the students at Ba’al Cedric’s. So in a very real sense, this wasn’t much of a revelation.

So why should any of this be bothersome?

Nevertheless, she still swore by The Six on occasion, and she still felt a lurching in her innards at Drav’s proclamation. An absurd artifact of her upbringing, she knew, but despite that it remained there like a thin fish bone stuck in the back of her throat.

All that passed through her head in the briefest of moments.

Drav grimaced. “Now you see why I didn’t want you to tell Arenya. She has enough trouble as it is.”

Evidently her poker face needed some work.

“We’re not crazy, I promise.” Drav looked away. “Okay, so maybe I’m a bit crazy. But the rest of us, we’re just regular demons trying to get by in the world and we have our god just like the rest of you. But it’s too dangerous to speak up about it. If everyone reacted the way you did, it’d be frustrating, but lots of people would react worse. A lot worse.”

Cartalis felt a pang of guilt. Drav was right, after all - those with strong beliefs and little tolerance for others might not stop at a concerned look upon hearing of this new religious group.

The pang ended when her memories returned to the night of the Great Feast. “Such as by attempting to forcefully convince others of the wrongness of their ways? Making them morose on their holy day of joy?”

Drav cringed. “If that lady is who I think she is, nobody really likes her. She goes around trying to find others who like The Six and convince them to join, no matter how many times she’s been told to knock it off. The leaders are getting sick of her. We don’t talk to others like that.”

Cartalis detected the hint of a lie in the inflection of Drav’s voice, but she determined that pursuing it now would be fruitless. She let it remain for the moment.

“We may discuss the details of the theology later,” said Cartalis. She found with some surprise that she was genuinely curious about what sorts of changes they would have had to make to their liturgy. “Through this group, you met Daniel?”

“I’ve never met him. Maybe I saw him once at a meeting, but we were never introduced. I did hear about him from time, though. He’s kind of a big deal. I’ve been hearing more about him lately, though I dunno why exactly. I think they want him to be a leader of some kind.”

“And that makes them so concerned about Arenya that they would write a letter like this? Why?”

“Man, I don’t know.” Drav laid his head in his hands. "Most of the people there I’ve met don’t like Followers much - you know, we demons and they never got along well. Most of them never met a Follower. Neither had I, before Arenya. Maybe they think she’s a bad influence?

“Look… I’m sorry about all this.” Drav clenched his fists. “I’ll talk to someone, I promise. I’ll get it sorted out. But please, can we move on?”

Even The Fiery One could get her heartstrings pulled sometimes. Seeing Drav’s eyes barely begin to well up told Cartalis she’d done more than enough this time.

“I have learned what I feel a need to know, for the time being. Might we continue to discuss, under… less strenuous circumstances another time?”

Drav nodded. “Let’s.”

And with that, he stood, turned, and left the room.

Cartalis sat back, thinking, trying to access her logical faculties through the guilt she felt at pushing Drav so. Some parts of this seemed a bit, might she say, cult-like? A focus on mystery, preparing someone in some obscure way, trying to put obstacles between their new members and their former friends… She could not quite tell if her concern was well-formed or if she was merely overreacting to something she did not understand. Either way, Cartalis determined to keep a closer eye on Drav for the time being. Hopefully this would prove unnecessary.

Just before she stood, Cartalis noted to herself that one notable question remained unanswered: Why did they care about Arenya’s sword so much?

Perhaps just the religious designs on the side caught their eye, and it was nothing more than interest in a sort of colleague.

Or maybe there was something more.