Nightingale slipped through the halls of the administrative building of the Starfal campus of the International Society of Alchemist’s academy. As she rounded a corner, she saw someone walking ahead of her, but thankfully away from her. Moving silently but nimbly, she caught up to whoever it was, some middle-aged woman with her hair in a bun, and crept behind her, getting as close as she could without alerting the woman.

It was fun, sometimes, walking behind people without being noticed or watching them when they thought no one was near, just as it was fun walking up random staircases or down random alleyways just to see what she could find. Secrets and hidden things were irresistible to Nightingale. She was the sort of person who would taste an unmarked potion, just to see what it did.

Of course, she wasn’t here today to follow around some random woman, so she soon separated from the woman and slipped down a flight of stairs. The basement was unlit, which meant that it was currently abandoned. Nightingale dug in her pocket and found a small coin. A real mage wouldn’t require one, of course, but Nightingale was an enchantment specialist, so with a brief whisper she made the coin glow with a soft white light.

She could already hear the voices. Ducking low to avoid the pipes criss-crossing across the ceiling, she made her way closer to their source. Most of the rooms in this building had vents. Some of those vents seemed to capture noise and pull it down to the basement so that a conversation on the second floor could sound as if it were happening right next to a listener in the basement. It was a great way to listen in on ISA secrets.

It was easy to imagine what Maxine or Andra would say. They would say she was being foolish, that the ISA was famously secretive and that she risked expulsion or execution. They would tell her that she had a job that was too important for her to take unnecessary risks like this just for her own entertainment. She was supposed to save the world, after all, kill the demon king and end the war.

But who cared about that? Nightingale had a life to live. She wasn’t going to stop having fun just because she had something important to do. She would go mad if she tried to live the way the ISA’s training program expected her to, spending every moment of the day practicing her shooting or taking apart her rifle and putting it back together again or studying ISA rules and regulations. Besides, a rifleman, Tarvis Mink, had just returned from the southern continent. Tarvis had been trained in the rifle before Andra had convinced the ISA to allow non-alchemists to learn enough secrets to operate and maintain rifles as long as they took the traditional ISA oaths to keep those secrets. Tarvis, unlike Nightingale and the other newly-trained riflemen, was a full-fledged alchemist, and supposedly an important one.

She had caught a glimpse of him as he had arrived at the campus. He was bearded and grizzled and dressed in furs, looking more like a hunter than an alchemist. What he was doing here was a mystery. If he needed to report his activities, why not do so at one of the campuses further south? Or why not use Magi-net? It must be something to do with ISA internal politics. Tarvis normally worked from the Starfal campus.

Nightingale extinguished her coin and crouched in the darkness, listening to the voice of Tarvis.

“I ambushed Duc Brimstone while he was hunting. They have deer in the south, you know, or something like them. The Duc likes to ride on the back of his lover as he hunts them.”

“The back of his...lover?” came the incredulous reply. Nightingale didn’t immediately recognize the voice, but she figured it must have belonged to someone who worked at the academy.

“Oh, his lover is a giant frog,” Tarvis explained. “Demons come in strange shapes.”

This was proving less interesting than Nightingale had hoped. It sounded like an ordinary mission assassinating some demon noble who worked for the king.

“Ah, yes, of course,” replied the other voice. “And were you successful?”

There was a pause. “No.”

“You failed? You understand how important this job was, right? Duc Brimstone is the only rival of the demon king with any measure of power.”

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Wait, Tarvis and this other voice were killing a rival of the demon king? They were secretly aligned with him? This was huge. Nightingale quickly decided that she should tell Andra, then just as quickly reconsidered. Tarvis was probably pretty wealthy. She could blackmail him with this information. She continued to listen as she considered her choices.

“Of course I know how important it is, but I couldn’t have predicted what happened. I waited until the Duc and his lover wandered away from the rest of their hunting party and ambushed them when they were out of earshot. I fired once and hit the frog in the leg. As I was reloading the Duc began to charge, leaping at me, claws out, like a feral beast. I only just managed to get off my second shot in time, hitting him in the chest. He fell to the ground at my feet, alive but apparently unable to move. I reloaded again and prepared to finish him off when something strange happened.

“The forest around me seemed to grow darker and I felt myself unable to move. I saw a hand reach forward from somewhere behind me. It was demonic, seemingly made out of shadow itself, unnaturally long and thin, but with a huge, clawed hand. It grabbed my rifle and crumpled it like a piece of paper. A moment later it retracted and the light seemed to return. I turned around to see who had stopped me and I saw a woman.”

“A demon woman?” asked the second voice.

“I’m not exactly an expert, but she looked to me like a demon-aligned human. She had small, black horns, like you see with humans who sell their souls in exchange for something big. She was young, probably in her twenties, and had curly red hair.”

Nightingale’s breath caught. It wasn’t possible.

“She said ‘Know this, the hero who stopped your evil plot is named Kaylen Arac.’”

Nightingale clasped both hands over her mouth to keep herself from screaming.

“Seriously? She just announced her name like a character in a bad play?” asked the second voice.

“Well, then she became nervous and said ‘Oh, but maybe don’t tell anyone because I’m technically in hiding.’ I asked her who she was working for and she replied ‘I serve no one save for my mission. My mission to destroy the gods themselves! Oh, but don’t tell anyone about that, either.’”

“So you’re saying she was insane.”

“It would seem so,” Tarvis continued. “I asked her what was to stop me from telling anyone and she stuck out her tongue like a child and said ‘Even if you do, it doesn’t matter because I’m on my way to the Demonic Realms.’ I reminded her that she was already in the demonic realms and she said ‘No, the real Demonic Realms. The world they come from.’ Then she picked up the Duc, apologized for hurting him, placed him on the frog, then picked up both of them and disappeared into the forest.”

“And what did you do?”

“Well, my rifle was broken and the Duc was alerted to my presence, so I retreated.”

Nightingale’s attention drifted away. Nothing they said could matter now. Kaylen was alive and well. It had been a year since Nightingale had last seen her. She had vanished suddenly after the tournament. Andra had been reluctant to tell Nightingale what had happened, but it was difficult to resist someone who broke into your room at night and pointed a sword at your throat. It had proven to be a tragic tale. Kaylen was promised to a fairy by her foolish mothers and the only way to escape her clutches had been to offer herself to a demon instead. If only Kaylen had thought to come to Nightingale for help instead of Riven. Riven couldn’t be trusted. For all Nightingale knew, the mage’s demon friend was just as bad as the fairy Kaylen was trying to escape. Nightingale could have helped Kaylen. She wasn’t sure how, but she would have thought of something.

Of course, Kaylen wouldn’t have been able to ask Nightingale, and that was Nightingale’s own fault. Life for Nightingale was all about having fun, exploring, trying different things. It wasn’t something to be taken seriously. But there was something about Kaylen that Nightingale took very seriously. Something about Kaylen’s earnest desire to protect women, her innocent belief that she could make the world a better place, that seemed important. She had seen it in her eyes in that moment when Kaylen had saved her life. They were practically strangers, but Nightingale had mattered to her. And since then Kaylen had mattered to Nightingale more than anything had ever mattered to her.

And now Kaylen was off on a mission to change the world itself. To create a better future by toppling gods who suddenly seemed like unchecked tyrants to Nightingale. Kaylen needed Nightingale to protect her. Well, she probably didn’t really need protection. Kaylen had a strength deep within her that never failed to impress Nightingale. She would carry the entire continent, the entire planet, and not even think to complain of the weight. Kaylen didn’t need Nightingale. But perhaps Nightingale could help her anyway.

No one noticed Nightingale slip out of the basement and the administrative building. No one took any note of her returning to her dorm or leaving it again with her personal possessions all packed in a backpack. No one caught her trip to the arsenal and no one saw her slip off the campus.

There was only one place where a living person could enter the Demonic Realms. Nightingale would meet Kaylen there.

After all, she had nothing more important to do.