Arakash steered their fall as best he could, taking them toward Port Kale. The landing was hard, but the worst he'd receive were a few minor bruises rather than broken limbs. He looked back at the cliff; nobody seemed to be looking over the cliff for them, but his magical senses didn't extend the whole cliffside, so he could be mistaken.

He looked at the princess, sitting on her knees. "I know you can't be that tired because I'm not. We don't have time to take a break."

Ada took a trembling breath as she dug her fingers into the sand. The thought that all of them were dead ran in a cycle through her mind. She knew most of them, to some limited extent. They had names, loved ones, families. The tears blurring her vision did nothing to hide their faces. Then there was Fiora, perhaps the only person in her life who wasn't family that cared about her rather than her title. "I can't believe we left them behind."

"I'd offer to let you go back and join them, but we both know I can't." Arakash' binding forced him to serve, but nothing in it required empathy. Perhaps because contract magic couldn't force the impossible. "Besides, I might have left a cute little surprise for them. Now let's go."

Ada looked up at the creature; he may have looked like a person, now, but he certainly didn't act like one. "What did you do?"

"Nothing special, just took advantage of all the miasma energy that summon spread up there to hide a trap."

Up above, the assassins approached the blighted landscape. "Lesvar, what do you make of this?" One of them gestured at the pierced skull of the Summoner.

Another came up to look at the dead woman and sighed. "Well, you know what they day about overconfidence. Check the corpse, see if the summoning gem is still there. If it isn't then we have to assume there were survivors. The question is if the princess is one of them."

"I meant, do we take her back with us and try to get her resurrected?" The bounty was more than enough to cover it, twice over if need be.

Lesvar glanced back again, as if the idea hadn't so much as crossed his mind until now. "Don't know. Tell ya what, we should bring her with anyway; can't have an exorcist interrogating her ghost, after all. We'll bring it up later if we want to revive her or split her share among us." His statement was tantamount to saying 'no', but this way let him pretend it was out of his hands.

Nobody liked her or her creepy religious monologues.

"Yeah, that sounds fair." The other man knelt down next to the corpse. He wasn't certain what he expected, but when the body wrapped her arms around him, he was too startled to scream a warning. If he had, it would have saved lives, though not his own.

On the beach below, their target heard and felt the magical detonations above and behind them. She stared at the demon, unable to find words to describe what she knew had happened. "You didn't."

Arakash smiled and kept marching forward. "There are many things I didn't do. But if you're saying I didn't infuse as many corpses as I could to the edge of the bursting point, then left proximity triggers to explode moment they were touched, then you're wrong. Now let's get moving; I doubt my little gift did more than slow most of them down."

"You desecrated their corpses!" The finality of their deaths were beginning to settle in. Before she had hope, but if their bodies were that thoroughly destroyed. "We could have resurrected them at the castle, but now..." They were beyond the power of revival. Now Fiora and the others were gone for good.

"You ever seen someone brought back who was killed by a dragon?" Even as he argued, he kept walking, and as long as the whiny child of a princess kept following, that was good enough for him. "Neither has anyone else."

She couldn't accept that answer; the guilt which came with it was "You don't know that!" Ada chased after, stumbling in dirt which couldn't decide if it wanted to be sand or gravel. She grabbed Arakash's arm. "How can you just keep walking as if you did nothing wrong?"

"Because I don't care, Princess." He turned, facing down the girl. "I wouldn't be here, risking myself for you, if not for being enslaved to you. And you'd already be dead. But here you are, and here I am, following my orders to defend you even at the cost of my or however many other lives needed to keep you safe."

Princess Adageyudi stepped back; she might have been immune to the supernatural aspect of Arakash's charisma, but she was still human.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

He took advantage, continuing his rant. "Orders which those soldiers back there were no doubt also under. They did their duties, they died, and then they did their duty just a little bit longer. And if any of them have a problem with that, then I'll apologize the moment they ask me for an apology." He turned and began marching toward town again. "And while it means little to me, maybe you should show some damned gratitude for their sacrifice and stop trying to get yourself killed by slowing us down."

Ada spared one look back at the cliffs they retreated from. She offered a short prayer in her head and decided that, self serving though it was, she should heed Arakash's advice and not let their sacrifice be in vane. With a small burst of magic, she warped space around herself and her demonic guardian. Now every step took them twice as far as it should have.

Arakash blinked in surprise and almost, almost, said he'd never seen magic like this before. It wasn't any of the elemental magics, nor was it any form of Fundamental magic that he knew. One part of him wanted to ask, but the cautious part decided it was better to give away nothing. "Interesting trick," was all he was willing to say.

"I can't keep it going forever, but I can make up for slowing us down." Now Ada had the footing advantage, moving with the sure footing of someone who could force the terrain to twist to her needs rather than be at the mercy of short legs and a less than ideal fitness routine.

Arakash couldn't beat that, but he adapted well enough. He couldn't help but think back to the crazy cultist who had told him this girl was going to be a threat to the world. With a power as alien as this, he could see why an oracle might get nervous. He began adjusting his plans in his head, considering the possibility of corrupting the young princess instead of destroying her. But that was a problem for future him to worry about.

Upon turning a bend, they found themselves looking at the small city itself. Port Kale was in fact quite a bit larger than the castle-town around Tyras, with dozens of vessels great and small taking advantage of the natural harbor around which the city was built. He spotted one military vessel docked, while two others were in the bay, no doubt to scare off pirates and smugglers.

Arakash considered the city for a while before deciding that his best course of action was to establish dominance by experience. "This place never changes."

"You've been here before?" The inexperienced princess walked into the metaphorical trap.

"On occasion," Arakash said. "I remember when your kingdom was nothing but a Siral fishing colony."

"That was over two hundred years ago!" Ada had thought many things, but she hadn't considered how old he might be in spite of not looking much older than she was.

"A little less than a hundred and fifty, I'd say. Historians love to exaggerate things like this." He only told her to make her question her education and wonder if he was a better source of wisdom than they. He only got away with it because it was true; young nations like Tyras hated to admit how little prestige they had in the world. "Now, we have to get you new clothes. For now, I'll just put a simple illusion on you so no one notices. But that's a temporary solution. You're paying."

Ada looked down at her dirty, torn, and in some spots melted clothing. "I don't look any different."

"You're immune to my magic, remember. Everyone else will see a threadbare but otherwise normal outfit. Unless they have a lot of magical resistance, but those sorts are rare and would probably recognize you on sight, anyway. Long as we don't rely on it too much. So, first priority: outfit. Second: transportation. Third: a cheap inn for the night."

"But we have a transport." Ada gestured at the ship in port. "Tyr's Hammer is one of the finest ships in the world, we'll be going on it. And Duke Leriel will be more than happy to give us a place to stay, and a good meal, and a message to Father."

Arakash stopped for a moment. "Oh, I'm sure he will. Plenty of poisoned soup, and when that doesn't work, our throats slit in the night. That'll send a message."

"Surely, you cannot be insinuating..."

"Insinuate? No, I'm openly stating. Someone is going to a lot of trouble and spending a lot of money to kill you. And I can't think of anyone with more money or motivation than another lord who is high up on the inheritance chart." Ada made to object, but Arakash cut her off. "And even if he's not, your assassins are going to be watching the places you're likely to go. They'll be waiting for you to either try to get back home, or to go for one of your vassal holdings. Then they'll be in danger; your hunters have shown a cheerful willingness to kill as many as they have to so long as one of them is you."

Adageyudi considered his argument for a moment. "And the warship?"

"We avoid the royal boat, too." It seemed almost too convenient to him that the same tactics that would give him the best chance to manipulate the princess were also the ones that protected her best. "If we go out on it, I bet it ends up at the bottom of the sea in a day. We can't drown, but when the sea monsters find us, you'll wish we had."

She had to admit his argument was a sound one, but still her father's words about never letting the demon be in charge rang through her mind. In a situation like this one, she was supposed to make his ideas into her demands. "Can you promise you'll find us an alternative route to Karana?

He hesitated for a moment as the bond compelled him to answer truthfully. "Admittedly, I don't know. But if I fail, then we can always take the ship. Maybe if we're lucky, the added delay will convince the assassins that the hydra killed you." He doubted it, but he had little choice but hope she'd accept his plan.

She doubted it as well; finding a different transport was fast becoming the only logical path, but right now she wanted the day, everything, to be over. Even knowing the risks of letting the demon call the shots, she didn't have the emotional strength to fight it. "Very well. Clothes, then shelter."