At midday, Luce found himself riding away from a burning village with only a killer headache and a shadow monster as company. On the bright side, the food one of his new companions had given him this morning had been better than the blood concoction the cultists and been feeding him for the last few days. If the thing in his head would shut up for a moment then this situation wouldn’t even be that bad: he had a full stomach and he probably wasn’t going to die in the next five minutes. Sure, that was a low bar to set but compared to the life Luce had led for the last few months it was a decent standard to have. Although the whole monster companion thing would take some getting used to.

Looking over at the thing riding next to him Luce had to resist from shuddering. While it was vaguely human in that it had two main legs, two main arms, a torso and a head the proportions where all wrong. The arms and legs looked too long and the face was too wide at the bottom. Rather than hands or feet, six long, chitinous, claw-like fingers splayed out from the ends of the arms and legs. The same black, chitinous material covered the forearms, legs and hips in armour-like plates. Everywhere not covered by the chitinous plates the skin was a dark, greyish blue and had a rough quality to it. The face looked almost normal in that it only had small canines protruding from below the upper lip, pointy ears, too big eyes tinged bright blue centred on too big pupils and otherwise normal shoulder length black hair. However, the most disconcerting things to look at where the eight spindly appendages that protruded from the back and wrapped themselves around the torso along with another pair that reached down over the shoulders and ended at the hips. The appendages covered the entire torso leaving little of the skin below visible but the way they would occasionally readjust themselves looked rather unsettling. Upon realising that his companion technically wasn’t wearing any clothes apart from a plain necklace and a simple wristband Luce quickly turned away and tried to forget all the extra appendages.

“So, why did you burn the village down?” Luce asked, hoping to get some information that didn’t involve an unsettling amount of appendages.

“Part of the job.” The feminine voice that answered sounded odd, as if part of the sound was made by clacking teeth together.

“Uhh… so what’s your job?” Luce tried after a few seconds of not getting an elaboration.

“Bounty hunter and assassin.”

An uncomfortable silence followed that statement. With nothing better to do, Luce set his mind to figuring out if his companion was female or not. He assumed the voice belonged to woman and the face also had a somewhat feminine look to it but both could just be a quality of the assassin’s species. Normally he would’ve assumed female anyway but the distinct lack of breasts made him very unsure. After the silence became too uncomfortable Luce just decided to ask.

“So, uhh… um. What ehhh…”

“What am I?” The assassin misinterpreted Luce’s question.

“Ye… …s?” He tried cautiously because he was curious about that too.

“Guess.”

“Are you from another realm?” Luce guessed after a moment because he really couldn’t think of anything that matched the assassin’s description.

“No.” Once again the abrupt answer didn’t come with an elaboration.

“I don’t know then.”

“I’ve had answers ranging from undead to various types of insects; surely you can think of something.” The assassin said casually.

“Uh…” Luce really hoped the assassin wasn’t easily offended, “…somebody glued spider legs to an elf?”

The spider-elf snorted at that. “Close enough. My father was an elf and my mother a crurang.”

“Crurang! You mean those monsters that live in the Sawblade Mountains? How does that e-”

“What did you just say about my mother?” The half-monster hissed, showing a mouth full of very sharp teeth.

Luce bleached, “I… I… didn’t mean it. I just…”

The half-monster just burst out laughing. The laughter really wasn’t that reassuring though, it contained way too much clicking and rasping to be anything but creepy.

“Don’t worry kid. I’m used to that kind of response by now.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Luce sighed in relief and desperately tried to shove his train of thought onto a track that didn’t involve a civilised person sharing a bed with a monster. How was that even physically possible? Luce had never seen a crurang but as he understood it, they didn’t even come close to resembling anything that could be considered a civilised creature. There had to be magic of some kind involved, if not fo-

Luce quickly shunted those thoughts out of his head as he realised he hadn’t even introduced himself.

“I’m Luce by the way.”

“I’m rkp-” the sound that followed was an incoherent clicking and grinding that Luce was sure he wouldn’t be able to pronounce even if he started eating nothing but rocks for the rest of his life.

“Ok.” He simply answered and decided to leave it at that before he stepped into another snake pit of uncomfortable monster facts.

After a few more moments of enduring a dead conversation, Luce was about to settle back into his awkward silence when the monster beside him smiled and spoke:

“Just call me Millie.”

---

It had been a while since I last had a proper conversation with someone. Most of my interactions these days tended to fall in either the stabbing, barely veiled disgust or ‘business’ categories. There had also been a few interactions that had involved copious amounts of alcohol but I hardly remember those, so they don’t count. I didn’t even realise how out of practice I was with talking to people before this morning. It took a bit of getting used to but I eventually managed to keep a conversation going.

After so long, I find it an odd experience; talking about things that don’t involve death in a peaceful manner. I’m surprised to learn that Luce knows a lot about the local fauna, especially which plants you can eat and which plants turn your intestines into a glowing blue sludge. I already know about the intestine sludgification plant though. It’s called tungleweed and makes a good poison. I also know about a few other magical plants owing to the fact that my father is an alchemist but Luce seems somewhat reluctant to talk about my family.

The idle talk of things that don’t matter almost makes up for the fact that I have to travel in daylight to enjoy it. Pulling shadow over my eyes makes the brightness bearable but the sun’s light still feels increasingly uncomfortable on my skin. Covering my entire body in shadow is just a waste of energy, so unable to bear it anymore; I reach into darkness and pull my cloak out. As I shift my back appendages to readjust for my cloak, I catch Luce deliberately looking away. Weird. Does he want to protect my modesty? He must have realised by now that I don’t have any breasts. Whatever it is, Luce seems to find my magic far more interesting.

“How did you do that?” He asks.

“You mean pulling my cloak out of darkness?”

“Yeah,” Luce says, seemingly stunned, “is it like, part of your species?”

“No, it’s just elemental magic.” Odd. Darkness isn’t a common school of elemental magic but it should still be recognisable as such.

“Elemental magic? But isn’t that supposed to be, you know…” Luce pauses as if he’s still afraid of insulting me, “…weak?”

“That depends on what you use as a fuel. Most people just use their own body’s natural energy reserves or fickle things like faith. That way they run out of juice way too quickly if they try anything beyond lighting a candle.” I say with disdain.

“So what should you use?” Luce’s voice is curious.

“An external energy source. There’s the somewhat expensive option of chugging mana potions whenever you want to cast magic or do what I do; if you’re gonna be killing things anyway you may as well use your opponent’s death for something.” I explain.

“Like a necromancer?” Luce asks sceptically.

I snort. “No. When you’re dealing with elemental magic the power source and the magic are completely independent. You can power your love magic with dead babies or the power of friendship and it won’t make a difference.”

“Love magic is a thing?”

“Probably not but I’d watch out if I were you; with those new horns you’ll be getting all the attention.” I say with a grin.

Luce’s expression goes sour as he reaches for one of his horns. “I almost managed to forget.” He whispers.

“Sorry.” I offer. “I am curious though, what did happened last night?”

“I was kinda hoping you could answer that.” Luce says meekly.

“Well, from my perspective the ritual activated when that dead cultist got his blood on the altar, something from another realm pushed through, latched onto you and you turned into a raging lunatic that looked like he had severely overdosed on various potions.”

“The potion bit might be halfway accurate. They fed me some weird shit while they held me captive. Other than that, I remember fighting something in my head and a lot of pain. Now there’s this constant niggling feeling at the back of my mind that becomes stronger whenever I think about it.”

“This might help.” I say as I pull a book out of darkness and throw it at Luce.

“What is it?” He asks, clumsily catching the book.

“Research notes, from the guy running the cult.” I explain. “Says he was studying something called demonology.”

“What’s that?” Luce pauses, awkwardly flipping through the book and looks at me as he asks the question.

“Don’t know.” I answer before looking at Luce’s awkward expression. “You can’t read, can you?”

“No.” He replies sheepishly and hands the book back to me.

I put the book back into darkness and decide to change the subject. “Do you know where you’re going after this?”

“Uhhh… not really.”

“What do you normally do?”

“Well… you see, I ahh…” Luce trails off.

“You were a bandit but now that Jaquine Benoit got offed you’re unemployed?” I finish for him.

“How did you…?”

I shrug. “Lucky guess. There’s not many reasons you would be in an out of the way village like Brownmond and the timing fit.” Also rather unlucky timing for myself, as I was about to go collect Jaquine’s bounty but the local lord got there first.

“What about you,” Luce asks after a moment, “where are you going next?”

“I’ll see where the next job takes me.” I answer before a thought hits me.

“You want to come?” I ask the possessed boy riding next to me.

“I guess.” Luce replies and for some reason I find myself smiling.