“Two hundred and twenty-three.”

The expressions of Saddoton’s townsfolk fell at the mention of such a large number. That was nearly half.

“Two hundred and twenty-three fell on this day, giving their all and more to take down the King demon you see before you now.”

Ballad’s words were solemn but stern, a brave front that both honored the dead and reinforced that, even in death, they had accomplished their goal. Though he was unhealthily thin and deathly pale, his harsh eyes and set jaw showed only an unyielding strength.

“Two hundred and twenty-three will be joining the ghostly ranks of the dead this night, but make no mistake. They were not failures; their deaths were not in vain. They gave their lives to protect the fortress, and with their dying breaths, they have ensured that we…”

Lokus tuned out of the commander’s speech, not having any particular investment in what he was saying. Instead, he turned to Vera.

“Did you have something to do with the demon horde appearing?” he asked bluntly.

Vera glanced at him briefly before returning her gaze to speaking Ballad at the front of the crowd. “What makes you think that?”

‘She’s smirking,’ Lokus thought to himself. So she did have something to do with it. That or she was amused at the insinuation, it was hard to tell considering how little he knew about her.

“A few things,” Lokus began. “The fortress seemed to know of the horde’s arrival minutes in advance, a strange achievement considering the pitch-black caverns surrounding us.

“Then there’s the soldier that, upon seeing the King demon, had said ‘She did it.’ And probably the most important one, those words you said last night. Not if the demon horde arrived, but when. Almost like you were expecting it.”

“Do you know why I’m in this place?” Vera asked suddenly.

“No, I don’t.”

“Saddoton was struggling with food reserves. They had far too many mouths to feed and much too little food with which to feed them. In this desolate place, they cannot grow fruit trees or wheat. Not even mushrooms will survive in this finger.

“They have their breeding pens and the demons they raise, yes, but it’s simply not enough. So, they hired me to fix the problem.”

“That explains it, I suppose,” Lokus hummed. He raised his left arm to scratch an itch on his head, only to smack his shield into his temple and hiss in pain.

The shield had been returned to him after they had finished cleaning up the battlefield, and with no other place to put it, he had strapped it back onto his arm, something that was now coming back to bite him.

Vera let out a small chuckle at his blunder, before motioning to him with an arm. “Follow me, I need to show you something.”

“Show me something? What it is?”

“You’ll see when we get there. Are you going to follow or not?”

“This isn’t some ploy to sacrifice me to demons, is it?”

That got a good laugh out of her. She shook her head with a wry smile as she began walking away, not even checking to see if he was going after her or not. “Perhaps, perhaps not. I suppose it’s up to you to take that risk, isn’t it?”

With a final glance at Ballad, Lokus went after the woman.

………

Vera closed the barn door behind them, leaving them alone with the braying demons within.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Ibmund slithered in after the door had shut, silent and unseen, a sort of insurance for Lokus in case things went south. He didn’t know enough about this woman to trust her yet.

“So what did you have to show me?” Lokus asked her.

“This.” Fishing into the sleeve of her robe, she pulled out a small object that looked to be a rather bumpy ring in Lokus’ Domain.

“A… ring? I’m not yet ready to marry, if that’s what this is for.”

“Ha!” she laughed. “You’re nowhere near my tastes, trust me. No, this is a gift. Consider it a token of good luck, from someone interested in the path your future will take.”

“And this someone isn’t you?” Lokus asked with a raised eyebrow.

The brow was lost on the woman, of course, as he still wore his mask, but she still smiled at the question.

“I made it, but no. It’s not from me. Take your mask off, there are some things your Domain cannot tell you.”

Lokus exchanged a glance with Ibmund, or he would have, if the demon had eyes. Although Lokus still had his axe and shield, something told him that they wouldn’t be enough against the woman should she choose to attack.

Taking off the mask was the same as leaving himself defenseless. His Majesty had not yet progressed to a point where he could use it reliably in combat barring a paltry conjuring of claws that would do less than the axe he held.

“What? You don’t trust me?” Vera chuckled again. “That’s smart. But if I wanted you dead, I could have easily done something about it during the Ritual, you know.”

After a short pause, Lokus slowly took off his mask, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim light of the barn before looking down at the ring she held in her palm.

She moved her hand toward him, offering it to him, and he carefully plucked it out of her hand before bringing it up to the light, turning it in his fingers.

‘This color…’

Purple.

Like the dragon he had seen during the Ritual.

And now that he was looking at it with his eyes rather than his Domain, that bumpiness he felt made more sense. This ring, it was made from scales. No, that wasn’t completely right.

The outside was covered in dozens of the scales, each as small as a grain of sand, but the inside was a smooth, pristine metal of the same rich purple color.

“That someone you mentioned…” Lokus started. “Would it happen to be the dragon I saw during the Ritual?”

Vera’s smile widened, but she neither confirmed nor denied it, instead pointing at the ring in his hands. “That isn’t just a fancy ornament to wear around your finger. There are two things that it can do for the current you.”

“Which are?”

“First, put it on. Go on, do it.”

Lokus slipped the ring onto the ring finger of his right hand with a weird look on his face, discovering that it fit his finger perfectly. How had she gotten the measurements? Could she have done it when he was asleep?

“When was the last time you ate?” she asked him out of the blue.

“…Yesterday, why? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Twist the ring around your finger thrice.”

“Okayyyy…”

His weird expression turning weirder, he did as she said, only for his eyes to widen as a surge of energy rushed out of the ring, up his arm, and down into his stomach. Suddenly, he was as full as if he had just eaten a full-course meal, and he could feel his stomach working to convert that energy into something usable by his body.

“I assume you can recognize what happened,” Vera stated, a pleased smirk on her face. “You can use this ability of the ring once every two days. As for the second, well, seeing is believing. Take the ring off and pour your Majesty into it.”

Once again, Lokus did as she said, drawing on the energy of his Sovereign Gateway and allowing it to trickle into the ring in his palm.

The instant he did, it floated up two inches above his hand, the inner, metal part of the ring splitting and spinning like the gimbals of a gyroscope. From a single ring, there were now six. Five of them branched off from the sixth, which was the original ring with the scales on the outside, and spun around before landing in a certain position.

Runes lit up on the metal surface of the five new rings, pitch black and glowing with a dark light. Within these rings, a small purple triangle of pure energy flared to life, swiveling around wildly as it pointed at nothing and everything.

“You need to give it a direction,” Vera informed Lokus. “It cannot work without knowing the direction of your desire.”

Frowning, Lokus thought of north, and at one, the arrow’s wild spinning stopped, pointing straight in a certain direction.

“…So it’s a compass,” Lokus said.

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Lokus looked up at the woman, intending to say something sarcastic, only to blink.

He was only now realizing that this was the first time he had truly seen her. Before, he could only feel her through his Domain, but seeing someone using one’s own eyes was a profoundly different experience.

Her skin was pale, so pale as to almost be sickly, but stopping just short of that threshold to give her an appearance of one who had never seen the sun. The hair spilling out from her hood was the yellow of wheat, perfectly complimenting the piercing sky blue of her one visible eye.

The robes she wore were a dark, earthy brown, and the trim he had noticed before was a bronze gold matched by the pendant around her neck and the plate on the back of her gloved hand.

“…I thought you said the Ritual took a lot out of you,” he managed to say after an uncomfortable period of silence. “You don’t look any worse for wear.”