When the white around him turned grey and dark splotches appeared in his vision, D’Argen slowed his step. The splotches turned darker still until they appeared like black drops of ink on wet paper. He slowed enough for the trees and hills to gain an outline, then even more until colour slowly bled into the world. As he turned his run into a jog and then a walk and finally stopped, Kassar bent over beside him and promptly threw up.
Before the other could rise though, D’Argen forcefully shoved him back down until they were both lying in dead grass on their bellies.
Those black splotches turned into demons stalking around the ruins of wooden houses and tents. They were close enough to stop and sniff the air, look around, and turn toward them. D’Argen covered Kassar’s mouth to stop him from speaking, but the man’s breaths were too heavy. One of the demons spotted them.
It was a huge thing, standing at least as tall as three of D’Argen in one, with unproportioned legs and three sets of arms that all ended in two sharp claws.
How Upates created these creatures and believed them to be an image of either the gods or the mortals was a wonder. Most of them looked like a combination of at least two or three different animals and nature itself. This demon, however, seemed to have more intelligence than the ones D’Argen had encountered so far.
Instead of rushing at them and screaming, it stayed back and still. Its eyes were focused where D’Argen and Kassar were trying to hide and though it did not move, the horns at the back of its head were shifting around and rubbing against one another.
D’Argen tasted something sharp and acidic at the back of his throat and realized the demon was making sounds even though his ears could not hear them. A moment later and a few others like it emerged from the ruins. They all narrowed in on D’Argen and Kassar and stepped forward, then stopped. There seemed to be some invisible barrier that they would not cross.
D’Argen slowly rose, keeping his centre of gravity and one hand touching Kassar’s shoulder, ready to run at a moment’s notice. The four demons all shifted together in the exact same way, an echo of one another that had D’Argen furrow his brow. Their horns were spinning and shifting in different patterns, but otherwise they all moved as one as they spread their legs and their arms went out, looking like some huge spider creature.
“What is going on?” Kassar whispered quietly beside him. As one, the demons shifted their heads and their eyes focused on him only.
Kassar tensed and the scent of roasted pine nuts came to D’Argen’s nose as the man released his mahee. The demons’ horns all stopped as one and then started shifting much faster, clacking so loud and emitting a high pitch that D’Argen could finally hear.
Then came the most surprising sight of all.
A few mortals came out of from the ruins.
Both D’Argen and Kassar watched with amazement as a man carried a young child on his hip and walked right through a group of demons that had looked like a mound of burned wood until they raised their heads. The demons sniffed at the mortals, followed their forms with their heads, then hunkered back down.
“Was that you?” D’Argen whispered out to Kassar.
“No. Not me,” Kassar replied just as quietly.
“How do we… can we—”
“I do not know!” Kassar interrupted him with a snap that had the four demons in front of them hunching over and baring sharp teeth.
D’Argen took a cautious step back, dragging Kassar with him.
“We can’t just leave them here,” D’Argen said, even as his mahee begged him to run away.
“They seem to be doing just fine without us.”
“How?!”
“If I knew, do you honestly think—”
D’Argen stole Kassar’s hissed words from him as he opened his mahee and ran away when the four demons pounced. He took Kassar with him for enough steps to see the outlines of what was once a military camp before he slowed them down. Like the ruins they had seen earlier, the camp was mostly abandoned save for a few demons and mortals milling about.
As before, the mortals paid no attention at all to the demons and the demons only watched the mortals, not once interacting with them, let alone attacking or tearing them to pieces.
Another three sets of ruins and they finally stopped at a larger settlement that while it had the same broken houses and burned roads, seemed to have no demons in it at all. Instead, it had mortals that bared their teeth and immediately reached for their weapons when they spotted D’Argen and Kassar.
“Whoa! We’re just here to see if you need help!” D’Argen immediately raised his hands to show he was unarmed. After a moment, he nudged Kassar to do the same.
“You should not be here!” One of the men spat out as he approached.
“What? Why?” Kassar dared to question.
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“Shut up,” D’Argen nudged the man. “I apologize for our uninvited visit. We recently encountered a few settlements that were plagued with demons and wanted to make sure—”
“Take them!” Another of the men ordered, speaking over D’Argen.
“Take us? Take us where?” Kassar questioned.
D’Argen was tempted to grab Kassar and run, but he felt that getting answers was more important.
“We will go willingly where you tell us. There’s no need for weapons.”
The three men approaching them did not look convinced, but the young woman that ran toward the group with shackles in her hands slowed to a stop. She eyed D’Argen up and down carefully, then Kassar, then the armed men.
“You will not fight?” she asked finally, looking at D’Argen.
“There is no reason to fight. We’re just here to see if you need our assistance or if—”
“No,” she interrupted him firmly. “We don’t need your assistance.” The way she spat out the word sounded almost like an insult. “But if you don’t see a reason to fight, come with me.”
D’Argen felt it was finally fine to drop his hands and nodded.
“What are you doing?” Kassar hissed at him quietly.
“Finding out what is going on here. You coming?” D’Argen answered with a raised brow and then walked toward the woman. The three armed men did not lower their swords. Kassar followed him with a wary step. The moment they were deeper into the village, more mortals came out with weapons drawn until they were surrounded from the back.
“Where are you taking us?” D’Argen dared to ask the young woman they followed.
“Here,” she replied, her voice terse, and opened a door to one of the few stone houses that seemed intact. Something about the house made D’Argen wary. Maybe it was the fact that the walls were completely smooth, as if carved from a single rock, or that they looked so precise in their angles compared to the houses around them, but there was something wrong.
Or maybe it was the iron bars he saw that split the inside of the house in two.
He stopped before walking in and asked, “May I ask why here?”
“For our own safety. Somebody went to fetch the village head. She will tell you everything if you wait here.” Obviously, the woman understood D’Argen’s need for answers.
Kassar grumbled under his breath, but he did not fight too much when D’Argen grabbed his upper arm, dragging him inside. Almost immediately, he felt his mahee shove at him to run away, but then it quieted down just as fast.
Both halves of the house were empty and D’Argen eyed the iron bars. They were not hastily constructed and the way they seemed to melt into the floor and ceiling looked intentional. D’Argen did not even notice the hinges or the splits of the door until the young woman swung it open. She stood on the other side of the door’s bars and glared at them.
“Are you kidding me?” Kassar hissed out.
“Shut up and do as I do,” D’Argen hissed back and walked calmly into the cage.
Kassar did not seem happy at all, but he followed. The woman swung the door closed and did not even bother locking it.
“Stay here,” the woman said, walked out of the house, and closed the wooden door again without locking it.
“What are you doing?” Kassar rounded in on D’Argen.
D’Argen ignored him and walked up to the door. He nudged it barely a bit and it swung open. He gave Kassar a pointed look.
“Even if they locked it, do you think they could really build something that can hold us down?” he asked.
Kassar grumbled something under his breath but finally nodded.
“Plus. They didn’t bother to even ask for our weapons. I think they’re just wary. Look, I don’t care if you want to use your mahee and get out of here or not, but I don’t think we need to. We’re just here to gather information. We’re very close to the last settlement with demons and there is a chance the demons would arrive here soon if they have not already arrived and left. We need to figure out why the demons aren’t attacking mortals.”
Kassar once more grumbled, but instead of continuing to argue, he pushed the door open all the way and walked into the other half of the house. Two windows, one near the wooden door with wooden shutters and another inside the barred area with bars of its own were the only decorations.
As Kassar explored the empty space, D’Argen focused on the bars of the second window. Like those in the middle of the house, they did not have a frame and seemed to protrude straight from the stone. The stone that was very smooth and…
When D’Argen touched the wall with bare fingers, he realized that they were in trouble.
Then the wooden door swung open, and he felt a heavy weight settle in his chest like a boulder when an older woman walked in. Three others followed her, and Kassar, frowning, returned behind the bars beside D’Argen. He did not, however, seem to realize the danger they were in.
“Your weapons,” the woman ordered. One of the men they had first seen opened the iron door again and held out his hand, palm up.
“Do it,” D’Argen told Kassar as he unhooked his belt, the one that held his quiver, bow, and sword all in one go. He dropped it in the man’s waiting hand and was inordinately pleased to see the weight of it surprised the man. He did not go for either of the daggers hidden in his boots.
Kassar’s sword, bow, and quiver were given to the second man. They both left with their weapons and without a word.
“Put these on,” the woman ordered yet again. The third man came up to them and held out two simple bracelets made of a leather cord and a single stone on them.
D’Argen felt the sweat forming at his upper lip. He glanced at the opened wooden door to the house and saw a crowd gathered there. There were children present. The two men from before entered with yet another large and burly companion. D’Argen took the bracelet and slipped it over his wrist. Almost immediately, that weight in his chest travelled all the way down to his feet and he felt like he was stuck in mud.
“What is this?” Kassar questioned, obviously confused at whatever he was feeling when he put on the bracelet.
Before D’Argen could say anything though, the four men barged further in, shoving both D’Argen and Kassar against the walls. D’Argen tried to rip the bracelet off, but when his head hit the wall, he froze. Then he felt dizzy, a nausea that came from a pounding headache, and by the time the mortals had stepped on the other side of the bars again, he had a single cuff around his wrist, keeping the bracelet in place and the stone against his skin.
The woman pulled a key out of her pocket and made a point of locking the barred doors.
“Wait here,” she ordered, turned around, and left.
The mortal men followed her and slammed the wooden door closed. This time, D’Argen heard the lock fall into place, and it sounded like a sword striking stone. He chanced a glance at Kassar only to see the man sitting against the wall, eyes glazed over and staring at nothing at all.
D’Argen hissed and pulled him away from the wall. Kassar collapsed to lie on the ground instead. It was the same stone, though D’Argen had not felt it earlier. And then there was the cuff. It was a softer metal and try as he might, D’Argen could not touch it with his mahee. Either the bracelet under the cuff was affecting him or the metal was gold. It was possible for it to be both, but D’Argen could not tell at all. He did not feel his mahee at all. Even when he tried to open it as wide as could.
They were trapped. And D’Argen had walked them right into it without a single worry. He had been so focused on the demons, on his own double memories, that he had not even thought to worry about this accursed stone.