Aldritch continued to help in the store until it was time for Sulika to return to work. He learned she was heading in from Faeyra and offered to walk with her, since he needed to head back to the dormitories to retrieve some stuff, anyway.

Meanwhile, Sulika had been feeling antsy since Aldritch walked in on them earlier. Not because she was still embarrassed about being seen. She was over that already. But she’d somewhat forgotten just how big this bastard was. And there she was, without her sword…

Per her usual ritual; Sulika left her sword with the guild’s personal smith for repairs before heading home last night. It was something she did every time she returned from a dungeon. She only had the one sword, and she didn’t have the cash to have it replaced if it broke. Better to be without it for a day than to have it break when you most need it. Right?

Except now, she didn’t have a way to defend herself if Aldritch decided to hurt her or Faeyra. Sure, she still had her wand. But she was sticking with the supposition that he wouldn’t give her enough time to get a spell off before snapping her neck, so she couldn’t count on it.

Nevertheless, it was better to have him with her than left alone with Faeyra. So, that’s how the two of them ended up walking side by side through the now bustling Market Square. The ease with which everyone maneuvered through the massive crowd was impressive to Aldritch. He hadn’t seen this many people gathered in one spot since his youth, and he remembered the experience was far more chaotic than what he was seeing now.

Just the number of races present was baffling to him. Most cities back on Mag Ársa were mono racial. Even during times of peace, most races preferred sticking to their own lands. This was especially true for the dwarves, elves, and orcs.

But that didn’t seem to be the case here. During the first five minutes of their trek to the guild, Aldritch saw two different species of elf, hill dwarves, half a dozen kinds of human, a group of three doglike humanoids arguing with a pair of cat people – And these differed from the species Aldritch was used to. On Mag Ársa, the beast races were essentially just humans or elves with more animalistic features. But the groups he was looking at now were fully anthropomorphic Dogs and Cats. They possessed all the features of their animal cousins, but they walked on two legs and possessed five ‘fingers’ on each paw.

Aldritch was interested to note their sizes varied more than he would’ve thought. The tallest dogman had a blocky head, wide muzzle, pointed ears, and solid black fur. He – or she, Aldritch wasn’t sure which was correct. They? Yeah, that works. They stood around six-feet tall with wide shoulders and a heavily muscled body.

Meanwhile, the tallest cat person had a long face, a thick fur coat that reminded Aldritch of a storm cloud, piercing yellow eyes, and short ears. Most surprisingly of all, it stood nose to nose with the largest dog.

On the opposite end of the height dichotomy. The smallest dog had a bulbous head, floppy ears, a tan coat of fur, and a twitchy demeanor. It stood around four feet tall, maybe less if you considered it was wearing boots. And the smallest cat had a round head, short black fur, and pointed ears. It stood around the same height as the smallest dog, though it appeared to be an inch or two taller than the dog… Which Aldritch imagined might’ve been the cause of the argument.

He had nothing to back up his assertion. It was just amusing to think about, based on what he knew of small dogs and cats. It didn’t seem to matter what species you were talking about. They always seemed to be the loudest in the pack and the quickest to throw haymakers if they felt disrespected.

“Some things never change.” Sulika chuckled.

“What do you mean?” Aldritch asked without taking his eyes off the feuding cats and dogs.

“You’ve noticed the Caitsith and the Kandis over there, yeah?” She asked. She discreetly pointed to the cats and dogs. “They’re all part of the hunters guild; The three Kandis are miners and the Caitsith are closers, like me. Well, the two shortest are dating and have been for a few years, and they’re both extremely competitive.”

“Ah.” Aldritch said, somewhat understanding what Sulika was getting at. “So you meant them arguing like this is normal?”

“Definitely. Happens at least once a week.”

“How mundane.” Aldritch muttered with a slight grin on his face.

Sulika’s eye twitched at his offhand remark, and she felt the urge to defend the couple. “That’s a rude thing to say. Sure, it might not seem exciting to you, but-” Sulika said. Her voice showed she was upset with him, so Aldritch interrupted her before she could really get going.

“I didn’t mean it as an insult; It’s nice to see something normal for a change. I don’t think I’ve seen a couple argue like that in centuries.” He quickly explained.

Sulika had been prepared to really lay into the giant, but after hearing his explanation, she felt like someone had sucked the wind out of her sails. Seeing him working in the shop earlier had left a deep impression on her. She’d almost forgotten it was just yesterday that she’d pulled him out of a dungeon… “I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions. I thought you were insulting them, and – Well, it wasn’t right. Sorry.”

“You apologize too much.” Aldritch said. He patted her shoulder to show he accepted the apology, but said nothing more. The two resumed walking in silence, and Aldritch went back to cataloging the many races he saw. Elf, dwarf, caitsith, kandis, some kind of winged lizardman, gnomes, halflings, and — He felt a wave of magic wash over him. It was subtle. And he probably wouldn’t have noticed it had he been back on Mag Ársa; with its mana dense atmosphere and miasma filled air, the environment would’ve obscured the mana. But Iolara had a much thinner atmosphere, and the air had yet to be tainted by the devil’s corruption, so the wave might as well have been hand delivered.

“What’s wrong?” Sulika asked. She’d noticed the way he’d stopped walking and pivoted his head to look in a specific direction. Based on her mental map of the city, he was looking somewhere near the industrial district they’d been in yesterday.

“I felt a wave of mana.” Aldritch explained. He narrowed his eyes in concentration and cast a spell – “Dragon’s Eye” his perception warped through space and time. Once the spell locked into place, Aldritch was no longer seeing the world through his own eyes. Instead, his perception was somewhere a few hundred feet above his head, and was looking down on the city. He sacrificed the ability to differentiate colors for the focused vision of a dragon; non-living materials grew hazy at the edges and shifted to gray-scale, while living creatures–or rather, anything with mana inside it, glowed like a beacon in the night.

Aldritch watched as hundreds of living beings were fleeing in their direction while a single light source followed them. The light was easily three times the size of the civilians fleeing towards them, which cut out many potential explanations for its existence. Aldritch also noticed anytime one of the smaller lights were overtaken by the large light, the smaller light would vanish.

Something was killing people.

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It only took Aldritch five seconds to cast the spell, investigate the source, and return to his normal view of the world. But in that time, the large light had vanished four civilians. “I’m going to go look.” He told Sulika. He didn’t wait for her response, he just started jogging toward the source while counting the seconds in his head.

It’d taken the large light four seconds to kill three people. If that pattern held true, then he had little time to play around.

“Three.”

He was being extra careful not to hurt the people who were just trying to go about their day. Even so, a few people bumped into him as he ran, resulting in the bouncing off and falling to the wayside. Those people yelled at his back as he continued to run away, but he didn’t have time to stop and heal them right now.

“Six.”

It would’ve been so much easier just to jump over there. But the shockwave from his leap would injure who knows how many people, and he had little to no control over his landing. If he accidentally landed on someone, that was it for them.

“Nine.”

After ten seconds of running, Aldritch could hear the screams. And as he rounded the corner of a building, he came face to face with the fleeing crowd.

“Twelve.”

“What the hell is that?” Sulika gasped as she slid to a stop beside Aldritch. She’d thought something was wrong the moment he started running. She’d heard him say something about a mana wave, and assumed he’d just sensed someone use magic… But no, the sight before her was not caused by mere magic.

The wave of people running towards them split down the middle at the sight of Aldritch and passed on either side of them. This gave Aldritch and Sulika an excellent view of the source of the commotion; A twelve-foot tall, gray skinned humanoid lumbered after the crowd with a bloody club in one hand and the dead body of a human woman in the other.

Sulika watched in horror as the Ogre, for it could be nothing else, brought the woman’s body to its mouth and bit into her shoulder, like she was a roasted chicken leg.

“Disgusting demon.” Aldritch growled. A palpable wave of bloodlust that followed the sound caused Sulika’s knees to give out. She almost collapsed on the spot and was only saved by Aldritch grabbing her arm to steady her. “My apologies.” He said without looking at her.

Sulika nodded in acceptance but said nothing. Aldritch vaguely noticed her twisting something on her right wrist but didn’t pay it any mind. His entire focus was on the ogre standing in front of him.

His bloodlust had changed the situation in two ways; the first was its effect on the civilians. Most of them couldn’t resist it and collapsed on the spot, their minds leaving their now unconscious bodies behind.

The second effect was on the ogre itself. The alpha demon dropped its snack like so much litter and pointed its too big eyes at Aldritch, the source of the strange feeling in its stomach.

If you had to describe an ogre in a few words, what would it be? Ugly? Stupid? Strong as hell and twice as smelly? All true statements. Most hunters knew ogres this way, and many hunters and demons alike believed ogre were too stupid to know what fear was; “What’s fear? Can you eat it?” Would probably be their answer if asked.

But the ogre watching Aldritch now knew the correct answer to this question. The weakness in its stubby knees. The haze slowly eating away at what few thoughts it had. That repulsive feeling you get just before you puke. These were not sensations an ogre was supposed to feel… But this one did.

The sound of a panicked creature drew Aldritch, Sulika, and the ogre’s attention to the side of the road, where a line of abandoned wagons and carriages awaited them.

Sulika spotted the creature first; a plains dragon was hooked into a harness at the front of a small, but fully loaded, wagon and the owner had forgotten to unlatch the pin keeping the wagon’s wheels from turning, preventing it from fleeing on its own.

Plains dragons weren’t like many other species of dragon. They were herbivores, for one. And the largest thing that separated them from their cousins was their size. Many plains dragons weren’t any larger than an ox. They were excellent pack animals and their tough bodies, strong wings, and nearly inexhaustible stamina meant they were often used on farms and ranches.

This plains dragon looked to be a juvenile. Soft brown scales that would harden as it got older covered its still growing body. Most people wouldn’t force a baby plains dragon to haul freight, since they could be injured during the journey. This led to Sulika wondering why it was here in the first place? An adult plains dragon would’ve run off with the whole wagon, loaded or not, brakes down or not. But the juvenile wasn’t strong enough to do so. Despite thrashing against the wagon with all its might, it wasn’t even strong enough to break free of the leather straps holding the harness in place.

“It’s going to hurt itself.” Sulika whispered. She felt bad for the animal. She wished she could help it, but an ogre was a six-star threat. It was something which required a full party of Class A hunters to bring down. She needed to call for backup if they had any hope of bringing it down- She noticed movement out of the corner of her eye, Aldritch was making a move.

Aldritch didn’t take his eyes off the ogre while he carefully stepped over the fallen civilian bodies. He was walking parallel to the ogre, moving towards the young plains dragon with a composed gait and his hands up in a placating gesture.

“Shh, hey. It’s okay.” He cooed. The dragon reacted to his voice by hissing and thrashing even more violently than before. Aldritch reached the dragon in a few seconds. He placed one giant hand on the wagon and the other on the wooden beam holding the harness in place. “Give me a second and I’ll get you out, alright?” He said in the same soothing voice parents used to coax children-

“RAAAGH!” The ogre roared. Its two brain cells had grown bored with the new sensations they were experiencing and stopped working together. The ogre slammed its meaty fist into its fat covered belly and chest in a show of dominance… Aldritch couldn’t figure out how to undo the latch holding the dragon in place, so he just snapped it off. He smiled at the young dragon and cautiously reached for its head.

The ogre pounded on the ground to get Aldritch’s attention. Despite the severity of the situation, Sulika found the ogre’s antics far less intimidating now, though she wasn’t sure why. She discreetly pulled a black object from her back pocket and brought it to her palm- She flinched as she quickly struck it against the callouses on her palm, causing a small flame to appear on the end.

She pointed the flare towards the sky and shielded her eyes as a bright ball of purple light was shot into the sky and exploded. She drew her wand and thought over her available spells. Most of them weren’t directly useful in combat. She specialized in crowd control; pinning down the enemy or otherwise hindering them while her teammates finished them. Could Aldritch do the same- She noticed something at that moment that throttled her hopes in an instant.

Aldritch didn’t have his poleax.

“Where did it go?” Now that she thought about it, she didn’t know when he’d lost it. It’d just vanished at some point, and she’d been so overwhelmed by everything else, she hadn’t noticed it was missing. “Did he leave it in the dungeon?” Sulika glanced over at the ogre and saw its complexion had turned mottled with red. It was really upset about Aldritch continuing to ignore it. Meanwhile, Aldritch was still standing over by the dragon. Its head was resting in the palm of his hand while its tail gently swished back and forth under the wagon.

Aldritch grabbed the dragon’s harness with a single hand and, with a quick yank, snapped it off. The dragon let out a grateful cry before running off on its own- Which the ogre really didn’t like. It let out a frustrated scream like the oversized, petulant child it was. And rushed at Aldritch with murder in its eyes.

Sulika thrust her wand towards the ogre- “Conjus- Earthen Shackles” She winced as the second level spell drained most of her mana for fuel a second before launching from the tip of her wand.

The spell flew the thirty feet between her and the ogre in the blink of an eye. It pierced the gravel road at its feet and quickly went to work; a pair of stone bear traps sprung from the ground and clamped down on its feet during the brief second between its long strides- Sulika’s eyes widened as a large object, the wagon the dragon had just been released from, slammed into the ogre’s face.

The impact of a fully loaded wagon combined with the immovable shackles Sulika just willed into existence to cause devastating damage. The ogre’s legs ripped off at the hip at the moment of impact and its 800lb body was carried nearly thirty feet due to sheer momentum. The wagon and the ogre crashed onto the gravel road with enough force to shatter the wagon, demolish the boxes it held as cargo, and turn the ogre into little more than a red smear on the ground…