Demon continent Alsace in the year 237 in the 9-month Lilithum on the 31st day after the shattering of the empire.

The sun was beautiful as it burned her back like this, slowly warming her whole body, one scale at a time. Life could be beautiful sometimes, she thought to herself as she dozed on a branch.

Her charge had not come back for quite a while, what was she doing, she asked herself in one of her waking moments. Otherwise, the outside world was none of her business and she just continued to doze. With a full stomach, she didn't have to suffer from hunger or thirst and could simply enjoy the day and the beautiful warm sun. Only sometimes, when one of the few small clouds pushed itself in front of the sun, she became a little more awake and checked the time. Like now, where again a cloud pushed itself in front of the sun and robbed her of its warmth.

Slowly she opened one of her eyes and looked at the world below her and tasted the world and still nothing from her charge. Where had her charge gone? Surely nothing had happened to her? Or had it? If something had happened to her, then the great mother would certainly have given her some kind of a message. For sure, she would have done that, she was convinced of that.

After reassuring herself that she had nothing to worry about, she went back to enjoying the day and the beautiful weather. Soon she was back in a twilight state, from which only the isolated shadows of the clouds tore her, so a whole day passed in which she did nothing, and also the following day she did nothing, and yet she became more and more queasy because her charge was still not back. Nevertheless, this day as well as the previous one passed and she slept through most of the day. The following day was no different, even though the worries were slowly getting louder and louder, she still managed to sleep through the day, even if she was a bit more restless than the days before.

The next day she couldn't shake the feeling that she had to do something, otherwise, she would never find the peace she so longed for. So she set out to look for her charge.

The traces she found of her charge were all a few days old, but she could follow them without any problems. First, the tracks led to the city, which was inhabited by these strange things, and she had to learn quickly that she had to be careful. In her first encounter with one of the things, it attacked her immediately and she had escaped only thanks to her quick reflexes, otherwise, she would have left her life or large parts of her skin behind. After this first encounter, however, she had fled to one of the nearby homes, even though she had first thought that the large mountains of plants, grasses, and bushes were normal undergrowth. Until she had fled into the first of them and she could see that it was like the nest of her charge, "a home", as her charge called it.

After that, she had to try not to lose the tracks of her charge, because they led everywhere and went from one home to another home, getting older and older. After she realized that she had followed the wrong trail, she had to go back to the beginning and find the trail that was the freshest.

Something that took her quite some time, but she succeeded in the end. From then on, she had to follow this trail just as she had followed the other trails, and like the others, this one also disappeared from time to time in one or the other home.

So she got deeper and deeper into the city without being noticed by anyone.

Something was different about this part of the area, where the tracks of her charge led, here it smelled of rats and also of something else not unlike the smell of her charge. Only that it smelled like rats, it couldn't be that they had come across another Titan. Her charge was supposed to be the only Titan walking freely on Arkan. Oh, hopefully, the great mother knew what she was doing, fearing the worst she set about following the tracks of her charge.

The tracks led to a big home or something similar, where a lot of those things were hanging around and Red Rivers, which smelled like Arkan's blood, were shaping things. With punches and by pouring it into something and then bringing out cooled Arkan's blood in a different form than it was before, were made. She didn't know why anyone would take the blood of Arkan and make it into something other than the blood of Arkan. Most of the divine races and also monsters were strange in such aspects, they all always strived for what they stole from Arkan. Understand the divine races and monsters, it was like killing the branch or tree on which she slept, something she would never do.

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

She followed the tracks of her charge further and further into this new other home, which seemed to be the home of the rats, she had to be careful not to be seen by these things or by rats. At the same time, she had to explore everything to make sure that her charge had not been captured by the rats.

To her relief, she couldn't find her charge and returned to where the tracks led deeper into the rats' burrow. It seemed to her that her charge had gone into the rats' lair, which was a really strange idea. Why would one want to go into the burrow of rats, it wasn't so they tasted particularly good, at least to her, rats didn't taste particularly good and they were basically just a plague that one would want to get out of one's territory as soon as possible. But as she had to learn, her charge was a little different than others, I wonder if all Titans were like that.

This made her pause in an awkward place, for she had just come into the light of a torch. What if it was the famous competition of the Titans that made her charge challenge the other Titan to a territorial fight.

Already shouts sounded behind her and from a balcony above her, she had been discovered and now these scaleless ones would hunt her, she was sure. As if she would let herself be hunted by scaleless ones, by descendants of the scale thief. That she wouldn't laugh, those rats would realize what they were up against.

Still, she actually had to get to her charge and she didn't have time to deal with these rats. She would have to pay them back later for daring to open the hunt on her. The trembling of the ground announced the approach of these things, accompanied by cries of the rats, which suggested only one thing, that they wanted her dead. But she didn't want to do them this favor and so she fled... rushed forward, no one would ever be able to claim that she had run away from a superior number of things and rats, she had a task and she had to fulfill it.

With one last look at the horde of things and rats, she disappeared into their lair and meandered further and further down, followed by a horde of golems and rats, following Cali's trail.

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"Commander, don't you think this is all a little strange?" Came the voice from his right hand behind him. He turned to her and the other soldiers of the imperial army. "What exactly do you mean by strange?" He growled out between clenched teeth. Gresa his right hand pondered for a few moments, during which she let her gaze wander over the scene around her.

"First of all, that the monsters did not attack us, but fled immediately. Then that these monsters are attacking the very group of demons that have been getting in our way for months." She paused to see what he had to say about that. "Not that I mind if we don't have to kill them Commander, but it seems a little strange to me and to the other soldiers. No?" She was right in what she said and it was really strange.

A few weeks after they arrived on Alsace and divided into different troops, strange things had happened to them and after some back and forth they had found traces that a group of demons was responsible for it. After they had come this far, they did not want to let some demons stop them from their goal. The demons, however, seemed to know exactly where they were going and what they wanted because they had somehow managed to distract them and lay false tracks, which they had followed at the beginning. "Doctor!?"

Kurpfuscher got back on his feet, he had earlier bent over one of the demons and tried to save its life. Generally, they had only Kurpfuscher to thank for the fact that they had noticed the false tracks, without him it would have taken several more weeks or even months until they would have distinguished the false tracks from the correct ones.

"He's alive for the moment, but I don't think we should let him out of our sight, lest he tries to take his own life, -" to a questioning look on his part, Kurpfuscher answered accordingly. -"No, I don't think he can escape, and you know it, Commander. I really think we need to be more careful that he doesn't take his own life just to avoid interrogation." He just mumbled something in response. It was clear that a secret unit like this group of demons must have taken such precautions. "But you mean we can now easily find out the direction of Caleb without the demons interfering like they did the other times?" "Yes Commander Rahssmus, I'm convinced of it and if we do the ritual as discussed tonight and the other groups follow it then we can get a better picture of where Caleb is." He nodded curtly. "Good, then I guess we should get everything ready. Gresa have we found a suitable spot?"

"Yes a few hundred meters to the southeast, there is a small clearing where we can hold the ritual, without any major problems." "Good you heard her soldiers two take care of the demon and two more guard. So let's go, we want to be on time." Shouts of agreement rang out and in a few moments, the soldiers had disappeared from the clearing.

None of them had seen the slitted pupils in the shadows, which had been watching them until now and now set out to follow them.