Ada took a moment to watch Arakash leave before she sat next to the unconscious redhead. As easy as it would be to blame the demon for everything, she couldn't; she was responsible for keeping a dangerous monster on its leash, and she failed. There wasn't much she could do about the rest of the disaster, but it was in her power to save this one.

She took a slow breath, and in spite of her limitations, began working her magic toward healing. Her ability to mend flesh was limited, but she could infuse the body with energy and compel it to mend as all living tissue mended.

The girl's eyes opened, revealing eyes of light auburn. "Wha-" She tried to sit up, only to be dropped back down by a dizzy spell.

Ada put a hand on her shoulder. "You shouldn't get up. You need more time to recover."

Now that the surprise wore off, the redhead stared up at the purple-haired one. She'd never seen that color before. "W-what happened?"

"You don't remember?" Ada considered the implications, and decided that it probably made things worse. "We're on a ship." How could she explain to this girl that she burned down portion of a city? She felt guilty enough for her indirect role in the disaster.

"I hate ships." She thought for a moment, collecting her thoughts through the dull throb of the headache she suspected wouldn't vanish for some time. "I remember some guy, then I-" The flash of energy, of power, just like-

Ada reached out, put a hand on the girl's shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. "Don't worry, I know about your fire magic." She worked up the bravery to tell her what happened, but decided against it for now. Fear and guilt aside, she needed to make sure her patient was well before delivering such terrible news.

She looked away. "I don't like to think about it."

"I can imagine." Ada considered the circumstances. "You're safe, now. I swear, whatever else happens, you will be safe."

They sat there for quite some time before the girl found her voice. "It was never so intense before." She looked back at the girl sitting next to her, trying to find the words. You're beautiful. "You saved me." Why?

Now it was Ada's turn to look away. "After... everything. You passed out. I've been taking care of you all night. I'm sorry."

"Don't be." She offered an uncertain, fragile, smile. "You're a healer?"

Ada gave a grim chuckle. "My father insisted, but I never had much talent. As a healer or any other sort of mage." She had raw power to spare, but no ability with any sort of bloodline. A burden she saw no reason to saddle on this girl who had problems enough of her own. "I recognized your mana exhaustion and did what I could to feed you energy, that's all."

"I've always been a pyromancer, but I've never become fire before. I..." The redhead closed her eyes, to stop herself from crying, but she couldn't hold back the memories clawing their way up from the darkest parts of her mind. "How many people died?" This time.

Princess Adageyudi held her breath, considering how to answer the question. She forced herself to look at the girl, at the tears leaking from her closed eyes. She couldn't bring herself to lie, no matter how much she wished she could. "I... don't know. Much of the city was in flames when we escaped. There were riots, and looting, and..."

"I knew it would be bad." It always is.

"I'm so sorry." Ada choked back tears of her own.

"No!" The girl tried to sit, and again found she didn't have the strength. Instead, she put her fingers on top of the hand still on her shoulder. "It's not your fault, it's mine. I'm the one who lost control." She stopped when that only seemed to make it worse, and opted to change the subject. "Say, what's your name. I'm Shiara. Shiara na Ifaril."

Ada forced herself to smile at the absurdity of the situation. "Shiara? That's a pretty name." She also recognized the title from her spiritual lessons; Ifaril, God of Purifying Flames. "You're a priestess?" It was something of a stereotype, but pyrokinetics did favor Ifaril.

"No," Shiara said. "My family was very religious." As grateful as she was, this was as close to the truth as she could bring herself to come.

Ada nodded in understanding; it explained the name in spite of her being too young to be priestess to any god she'd ever heard of. "I'm Adageyudi na Tyras." There was no point in not finishing with title, given that to her knowledge her own name was unique.

"You're Princess Ada?!" Shiara sat up in shock, and this time managed to not fall over again. The adrenaline burst of knowing she was literally rescued by the princess overcame her exhaustion. It was all she could do not to bounce with excitement. She was rescued by a princess.

Ada moved back in surprise at how fast the girl seemed to recover, and how happy she seemed to be. After yesterday's series of disasters, and Arakash's constant use of her title in a way that felt like a pejorative, she felt the need to put boundaries around her title. "Please, just call me Ada. I'm trying not to call attention to myself."

Shiara realized how close she was, and slid back a little. "... Ada." She still added 'Princess' in her head, and nobody could stop her. "You're right to be careful, with the bounty on your head." And you trusted me with the truth.

Ada kept her expression as neutral as she could; she'd had a great deal of practice doing that of late. "Bounty? There's a bounty?"

"It's a small fortune, too." I'm helping the Princess!

Even Ada was starting to sense the excitement off Shiara. Was that a spark of electricity in her eyes? "You're not going to try to kill me, are you?"

"No!" Shiara then realized she was shouted the word. Her face turning red with humiliation, she looked down. "I'm no assassin. I mean, I've hunted monsters, and there are a lot of people in that work who... also hunt people, which is how I knew about the bounty! But not me! And I'm no snitch! Even if I didn't owe you, I'd never tell. You can trust me with any of your secrets." Please?

Ada smiled, relieved that her good deed wouldn't come back to hurt her. Or, she hoped it wouldn't. Shiara seemed like the honest sort to her, but recent events had taught her that she was a terrible judge of intent. "I'm glad." She took a slow breath, and lowered her voice. "But, I have one more thing you need to know."

Shiara's breath caught, then she leaned in, not daring to think what she was hoping, for fear she'd ruin it. "You can tell me, I promise."

It was then that the door opened, and Arakash didn't get the chance to walk in.

Shiara jumped to her feet as her hair caught fire. "You!" Moments later, the fire flickered out and she landed, this time caught in Ada's arms. They both tumbled to the ground, with her still staring at the bastard. "He tried to kill me!"

Ada cradled the girl and stroked her now normal hair. "It's ok, he can't hurt you, not now or ever again."

Shiara struggled, though she barely had the strength necessary to move. "You know this freak!?"

"I don't see how you of all creatures get to call me a freak," Arakash crossed his arms, smirking at the weakened girl that had almost killed him. "But you could say we're familiar, in more ways than one."

"Silent, you freak!" Ada shouted. "Don't move, either." She didn't have time to deal with Arakash's passive-aggressive rebellion and Shiara's justified fear and anger. "It's a long story, but I control him, and I've given him orders never to hurt you."

Shiara took her eyes off the demon just long enough to look at Ada, mere inches from her. It was nice, though it would be better without the company. "How?"

"It was my father's doing," Ada said. She knew that trusting Shiara with this much information was a risk, and took the plunge regardless. "I only understand the basics, but it's a specialized form of binding magic. Most of it's a standard Servitor Bond, but with an added advantage that If I'm injured, it draws from his life energy to keep me alive."

Shiara wondered if she was being lied to; she hoped not, but she'd never heard of such a spell before. She imagined it would be labeled as 'blasphemous' and get its users 'purified', but if anyone had forbidden magic, it would be royalty. "That's incredible."

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"I can't disagree. I'd already be dead if not for this spell." At this point, Ada realized how close the two of them still were, and made to untangle herself from Shiara, then turned to look her in the eyes. "Now you know why you don't owe me anything. He has to protect me, but it was my responsibility to protect everyone else from him, and I failed."

"You shouldn't apologize," Shiara almost went to hug her, but didn't. "But why did it attack me?"

Ada wondered just how sheltered Shiara was to not know the answer. "He's a Noctrel, eating people is what they do."

Shiara shook her head. "I know that. What I mean is that I'm... different. Most supernatural beings run when they sense my presence. I think they somehow knew what might happen. It sought me out when there were so many less dangerous victims to target."

"Arakash, answer the question."

Arakash, meanwhile, had been standing in the corner wishing he could escape his enslavement for just one moment. If he could, then it would all be over, both of them would die, and he'd have some chance of freedom. He resisted as best he could, but all that happened was he began to tremble as pain creeped across his muscles. "In order to escape the bond."

He hoped that would be enough. It wasn't.

"How?"

No! In spite of the pain, Arakash refused to answer. There was still the possibility he could find some other source of power that they might overlook, so long as they didn't understand the mechanism he was trying to break. If that secret became public knowledge... "Princess, every time you give a command, I get better at fighting it." Warning her off might be his only chance.

Ada sighed, then reached over and gripped Shiara's hand in her own.

"Eep!" Shiara had been so intent on what the demon was doing that she caught by surprise when the Princess' dainty fingers curled around her own. She was even less prepared for what came next.

"Set my hand on fire," Ada commanded.

"What?" Arakash and Shiara said at the same time.

"Please, trust me." Ada turned to Shiara. "It doesn't have to be a big fire, just enough to burn flesh."

Arakash decided this was going too far, and tried to stop them in spite of still being unable to move. "Wait a minute, you're going to hurt your chan-"

"If you're sure." Shiara barely heard his panicked over her heart pounding while staring into Ada's beautiful purple eyes. She drew on some fragment of her strength and allowed that power to erupt from her fingers. To her surprise, Ada didn't recoil at all as the flame licked up to their wrists.

Arakash hissed, gripping his arm and struggling to fight as what little energy he had retained from his most recent victims began boiling away. He would have collapsed to his knees, if not for the command not to move. "THIS was your FATHER'S solution to my RESISTANCE, wasn't it PRINCESS?"

Ada looked away from Shiara, and channeled the best of her father's lecturing tone. "We can keep doing this until you run out of strength and die, Arakash."

Arakash's face warped as the limited concentration needed to maintain his human disguise began to falter. The best he could do was hiss as he was tortured by proxy.

Ada squeezed Shiara's hand just a little tighter. "The weaker you become, the less you'll be able to fight the binding. You will obey."

"Fine! You win." His hand, blackened by fire which had never touched him, began to heal the moment Shiara stopped fueling the effect. He'd bought some time, and with it, perhaps a way to deflect the question. "If we absorb enough energy, it changes our life essence. I hoped that by feeding on her, it would change me enough to cause the binding to fail."

"That can be done?" Ada flinched the moment she realized how much she revealed with that question.

Arakash tried to take advantage of the question by misdirecting her curiosity. "There's a chance it would work. And if it failed, you'd be none the wiser. As you already realize, I miscalculated."

Shiara kept holding on to Ada's hand, and planned to do so for the rest of her life, but she noticed the hole in the demon's logic. "Why did you fight so hard to keep that a secret?"

Arakash snarled at her, but he'd been snarling the whole time. "Obviously, I don't want her to know how I planned to escape."

"That's not enough," Shiara said. "You may be able to con her, but I've played better players than you. There's much more to it."

"What?" In hearing her statement, Ada still couldn't put together what she was getting at.

"Think about it, Ada." Shiara smiled, excited to be able to help protect her newly discovered princess. "He fought that question, tried to change the subject, anything to avoid answering it. Like he said, it's obvious he wanted to escape. Why fight to hide it?"

"You're right." Once again, someone else had to show her the truth. She turned her attention to Arakash again. "Well, answer the question. The complete answer, this time."

As the girls conversed, he thought of every profanity of all twenty seven languages he knew. No possible combination of them adequately expressed what he was feeling in this moment. "Fine. If we absorb too much power, it changes us, if only for a while. We have to put effort into digesting it, and in that time we are... vulnerable."

"How?" Ada asked.

"I can answer that, I think." Shiara felt downright giddy. "If he absorbed my energy, and I survived, I bet I could still control that power. I would make some spectacular fireworks. He could also be tracked, maybe his powers wouldn't work for a while, or he might find the energy sets off an alarm, and lots of other stuff. I'm sure an Archmage could find a thousand ways to exploit that weakness."

"If this became common knowledge, my kind would be exterminated to the last," Arakash admitted. He didn't think sympathy would work, but it was his last refuge at this point.

"You deserve it, and worse," Shiara said.

It seemed he was correct; there would be no pity for his people. "So be it. I care nothing of your judgement."

"He's right." Ada looked down at her lap, then over at the hand Shiara was still holding. "There's no reason to argue with evil. You simply purge it and move on."

"Sounds like your father's words again." Arakash growled. He had already decided that King Sorda was the being he most hated in all his years of life, and every time he heard more, it made him all the more certain of his opinion.

"He's a wise man." Ada sighed, feeling weary and tired in spite of the early hour. "Unless you have something important to our mission to tell me, you shall stay silent for the rest of the voyage."

Shiara resolved to do everything she could to comfort the fatigued princess. "Is he always that bad?"

"I wish," she said. "I hate everything about all of this mess, and I'm sorry I dragged you into the mess."

"Don't be. It's not your fault, I'm fine, and we learned something nobody anywhere knows about one of the most dangerous monster species out there." Her optimism was forced; there was blood on her hands. "It's the demon who should be apologizing, which won't happen. Now what do we do?" She hoped the 'we' was obvious enough without being too obvious.

Ada was too oblivious to catch on. "I'm heading to Karana, for diplomatic purposes. We should arrive in Vera in a couple days, then I'll give you some money to get back to Kale, but you might have to wait for a return vessel, I'm sorry."

Shiara just starred at her oblivious princess. "I think I'd prefer to go with you to Karana. Kale was getting cramped, and after last night I don't think it'll be any better." If anyone realized she was the source of the fire, she'd be lucky if all they did was execute her. When faced with that, or spending more time with the beautiful princess who saved her life, the choice was obvious.

"You don't know how happy I am to hear that." She closed her eyes. "I think I need to get some rest. Arakash, you stay in the hallway and don't cause trouble. I'm going to sleep against the door."