Crystal Essence: [Crimson]- Lvl.5— 44.09ESQ
Gritting her teeth Lavinia marches around the now melting clearing, leaving the walking pillar of fire to its dominion. Her failure to secure even a Pink Crystal vexes her to no end as she recounts every moment, scrutinizing her failings over and over again in her head. In the end she’s grateful not to have to fight that demon just yet, even if it means sparing Essence to further her escape from it.
In all her replays she doesn’t see how she would have defeated a demon like that. It’s the first of its kind she’s seen too, wielding fire like even better than [Prince the Minotaur] did and forcing the terrain to serve its elemental prowess. In fact, of recent, Lavinia’s encountered more and more hard to chew opponents and with her Crystal Essence shrinking it will only continue to worsen.
Not for the first time since she began hunting in the forest, Lavinia considers finding a crevasse like the ones she saw on the way and snuggling in for a two or perhaps even four weeks of slumber. Essence suffuses every stray breeze that billows through Reais and her Soul Crystal absorbs minute bits of it with each passing second. She can wait for her strength to return naturally before hunting through the forest like she used to, without fear of being overwhelmed by demons in far better shape.
Her foot shatters a large rock as she sneers at the thought. She held more pride in her abilities than that, she’s a Vampiric Demon after all and even if she gives into the reasonable idea of taking a well-deserved break, there still is the issue of the GroveStaff, Seraph and Jonn. Already she’s been gone as long as she’s known them. With the suspicious happenings within the Ruishia forest as well as Corym’s continued elusiveness, it is well possible that should she remain lost any longer, she will never find them again. The possibility of such digs a pit of dread in her stomach.
Leaving the scene of bubbling lava and the fire demon behind, Lavinia tosses her nose up and takes a whiff of the air, searching for blood, for scent of prey she’s devoured once before— Dire wolves, Kimpe, Jaui and most especially Trirax. Nothing but soot, dust and the crackling sulphur fills her nostrils though.
The fire has driven many of the creatures and demons she preyed on from their natural habitats and carved out domains. Though she has no way of facing that walking pillar of fire and its ilk, Lavinia begins to suspect the only way forward is through them. They are surely responsible for the fire that took swats of the forest to ash as the closest she’s gotten to the centre of the forest was fully occupied by roaming fire demons such as itself.
Killing them all— even if she had a way to do so without giving herself to their flames— doesn’t guarantee she’ll find Corym or her GroveStaff. The demon that pursued her and her prey was powerful and smart enough to communicate if it wished and so if she somehow managed to force it to its knees and not die, extracting information about what’s happened here will be possible.
As she continues her silent trek through the abandoned forest, Lavinia carries her thoughts to a more likely source of information— the pair of demons that rode large lizard monsters. One riddled with holes and pores seeping some vile bile and acid and the other, a shrouded demon whose mount was straddled with large, long blades and bloodstained armour. Both carried Trirax and Caldri corpses along with them, meaning they hunted near Corym, fought against their forces and prevailed.
For a moment Lavinia considers the possibility that Corym may have been destroyed. The Kimpe had already been plotting against the Trirax and the mood in the city was sour. Even though Jonn and Seraph could stroll untouched between each demon district, the unfriendliness was glaring. And then Seraph and Jonn got hurt at that Kimpe and Simak work camp, if Jonn got back to Corym and let Ulx know then a war would be the appropriate response.
“Halt!”
Lavinia spins on her heel and dashes behind a tree to her right. She sniffs as she climbs up its length, claws propelling her to its bushy top in seconds. The scent of a demon lingers in the air, its sudden stench confuses Lavinia as she shuffles through leaf thick branches, positioning herself within the tree as the demon circles below.
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Somehow it managed to catch her off guard, conceal its scent, footsteps and even the weight of its Essence. How?
“Vampire!” the demon yells, “You are Prime Ulx’s Vampire!”
It’s speaking to me! Wait, Prime Ulx?
Without bothering to look Lavinia descends from her spot in the tree, landing in a squat with claw extended and blood coursing faster through her veins. The demon points a white spear at her, the arms grasping it is skeletal and wears a stretched patch of pale skin that wraps very little muscle. The demon chest and torso bulge together in an irregular growth of fat or perhaps muscle that descends into four right-angled legs with clawed feet.
It looks like it can run in all directions at once.
“Caldri.” Lavinia sneers up at its spear point as she rises to her full height— which isn’t much compared to the four-legged demon smiling grimly at her. “Where is he? Ulx?”
All around them is forest, a part spared of the fires rage and the fire demons now prowling within but also devoid of any sort of prey. Until now.
The Caldri shifts on its legs, “Prime Ulx is in battle but he will return and be glad to see you, everyone will.” It spoke with relief and its eyes see solution in Lavinia, almost the same way Hera looked at her.
“Against who?”
It frowns, “The traitorous Kimpe of course, come I will show you to our camp.”
Lavinia isn’t completely convinced. She’s had very little interactions with the Caldri, in fact, this may be the first time she’s spoken to one as she was a guest of the Trirax and their relations with the Caldri was almost as icy as it was with the Kimpe.
However, it makes some sense now why the shrouded demon and its companion hauled Trirax and Caldri corpses but not Kimpe.
Lavinia studies the Caldri as it walks off in the direction she was headed before it spooked her. Nothing but trees, root and mounds of insect colonies existed ahead but then the Caldri vanishes. Lavinia blinks and searches, tense and anxious to break whatever illusion has befallen her but the Caldri merely reveals its head. It stands out as a disembodied part hovering above the ground. It offers a pale, stretched smile as it produces its arm through the veil of reality seemingly decapitating its head and beckons her forward as it vanishes again.
Cautious, Lavinia follows after it all while waiting for a physical attack but instead her senses are assaulted all at once as buried scents resurface, the sound of the forest speaks louder than the whisper it was before and the illusion clouding her sight is lifted.
Rather than more forest and anthills, Lavinia is presented with a scattered camp of demons, Trirax and Caldri of all shapes and sizes, but mostly thin and sickly looking. The sweet scents of Deran’s frying meats greet her before anyone else and her hunger for blood swells.
The camp although large and spread out is nothing like the hamlet of metal homes the Trirax arranged around Ulx’s tower. Rather than metal, shaved boulders and rocks form crude shelters of block pieces and mud. Both Trirax and Caldri share abodes rather than splinter the camp in two. A furnace burns beside a Caldri’s smithy, it hammers metal into blades with the aid of two Pink Trirax and their heated ocular beams. A canopy of leafy sheets held up by sticks and splintered timber logs houses Deran’s shop of exotic, mystery meat, he grills away with his tail aflame and waves by Lavinia as more and more of the demons take note of her entrance.
However, even with Deran’s blessed shop a step away Lavinia’s attention is drawn and seized by the shadow cast over the entire camp, the source of it being the unmoving [Stelc] looming above the tallest trees.
How did I not notice any of this?
“If you follow me I’ll introduce you to the captain of the guard, he’ll know best what to do with you until the Lord Ulx returns.”
Lavinia nods mutely and follows the guard down a well walked path cutting through the camp, the furnace and smithy. Lavinia waves at Deran as she passes his canopy, summoning a grin to match his toothy own even as dread fills the pits of her stomach.
She’s here. After so long of searching she’s finally found her way back to Corym or some function of it anyway. Her Caldri escort brings her behind the main cluster of shelters to one of the large, flaking feet of the Stelc. Underneath its belly is a circular table littered with papers, Soul Crystals and weapons of many shapes. Three Trirax and four Caldri hunch over it in intense debate.
“Sir! I’ve brought someone I think you should meet.” Her Caldri escort announces a step ahead of her.
The Caldri arranged around the table bring their attention onto her but the demon her escort speaks to is a Trirax scarred in his single eye with a blotch of white pushing against the natural red. He’s tall with broad shoulders and wears a black-red shawl over leggings inscribed with faint runic letters, belted with a blue crystal at the waist, all oozing with Mana— a sign of an enchanted material.
“Lavinia?”
“Jonn?”