Despite her uncertainty over the next day’s adventure, Clara found no trouble falling asleep. She awoke feeling surprisingly rested, and after sending one of the manor’s servants to fetch breakfast to her room she felt about as prepared as she would be when another servant arrived to summon her to the courtyard. She was led over to the stables, where Holden waited with the reins of an already-saddled horse in his hands.
“I’ve taken the liberties of arranging all that I think you will need for your journey, Miss Elwin. The saddlebags are stocked with provisions enough for the trip there, along with a blanket, some changes of clothes, and a few other accoutrements - your general traveling equipment. You will make your way to the Castle Southgarde where you will introduce yourself as Lady Cecily Haford - I’ve included a signet ring in your pack that, along with that, should get you through the gates without any questioning. The captain of the garrison there is another acquaintance of mine, and he will provide you further directions to the cambion settlement. Is all of that understood?”
Clara nodded, though she wasn’t sure that all of the subterfuge was necessary - but Holden had clearly gone to some effort to plan all of it, so she wasn’t about to argue. “I don’t believe the horse will be necessary, however; I think I’ve got a fair enough grasp on the ritual to summon a Nightmare.”
Holden’s eyes narrowed, and his tone was cold when he spoke. “Oh, is that so? I don’t believe you were directed to learn that one, Miss Elwin.”
Clara blanched at his words, heretofore unaware that she had made any mistake in studying beyond what she had been instructed to. “My apologies,” was the only response that she could come up with.
A mix of emotions that Clara found hard to read passed across Holden’s face, though it was only a moment before he restored it to a neutral mien. “I suppose I can not fault you for reading a tome that I myself bestowed you. Regardless, while such creatures are close enough to mortal horses, I think the differences enough that you need not risk causing undue suspicion by employing one. This steed will do for now.”
“As you wish,” Clara said, eyeing the horse. She had learned to ride when the family finances were not quite so dire, but it had been some years since she had last been in a saddle. Her knowledge of equines had never been very expansive, however, so nothing about the beast stood out to her beyond the simple fact that it was a horse with a black coat. She did note with approval that Holden had fitted it with a saddle that had a second, lower pommel designed to accommodate a woman riding sidesaddle, so she stuck a foot into the single stirrup and swung atop the horse. “If you’ve no further instructions, then I suppose I will be on my way,” she said after taking a few seconds to make sure she was properly situated.
Holden simply nodded, so Clara twitched the reins and was soon past the manor’s gates. As she rode through the city streets she had a moment’s regret that she hadn’t set aside some of her time in the past few weeks explore it. There were sure to be libraries and stores stocked full of mystical texts and paraphernalia well beyond what she had access to in Almerra. Now that she had allowed infernal magic into her soul, though, those pursuits were somewhat superfluous. Still, she would have liked to peruse them regardless, just for the simple pleasure of learning. When she returned, she would have to make the time for it.
She retraced the steps that Holden’s imp had led her down when she initially entered the city, making good time on horseback. She was at the city’s gates after only an hour, and through them without much trouble; it seemed the guards didn’t offer much scrutiny to those leaving the city. The crowded streets of the outer district were also far easier to navigate atop a horse, as the foot traffic parted around her; what had taken almost a day’s travel on foot only took another couple hours to get through.
The next few days were spent on much the same roads as her travels with Gideon, though in the opposite direction. Due to a mixture of the villagefolk that she met along the way remembering her being in the company of the Paladin, and her slightly more presentable appearance, she found that she was more welcomed than she expected; most nights she didn’t have to pay for food or lodging, and as such the first short stretch of the journey was fairly comfortable.
While she was on the open road on the fourth day out of the city, however, she spotted another traveler on the road, headed in the opposite direction to her. As he drew closer she spotted the telltale trappings of a Paladin: shining chainmail, a cloak in Church colours, and the holy symbol of the order around his neck. He looked a few years older than Gideon, with long black hair and a dour-looking face.
The other traveler gave a start when he looked up at Clara, once they were only a few feet away from each other. She saw his eyes lose focus for a moment, and then a grin crossed his face as he returned to inspecting her. “Well, well, well. Just my luck, isn’t it? I’m going to have to ask you to stop your horse and get out of the saddle, miss.”
Clara suppressed a sudden stab of fear at the possibility that the Paladin had recognized her, her fingers tightening around her staff where it lay across her saddle. It had been almost two months since she left Almerra, and surely the search for her had been given up by now. Still, she didn’t like the tone he had taken. “I am afraid that I will need more of a reason to comply with you, sir Paladin.”
“Right. How about being a demon-worshiping infernalist? I think that’s reason enough for me to take you in; but there’s a special warrant out for you in particular, if I’m not mistaken. You are Clara Elwin, are you not?”
The fear returned; she had been recognized. “I’ve not heard that name before,” she lied, in the hopes that perhaps the description given of her wasn’t very precise. “I myself am Cecily Haford, on my way to visit my father in one of his country holdings. I will make sure to let the Church know if I encounter this other woman on the road.”
“Off to visit your father without even a single footman along? No need for the lies, girl; I can see the corruption on you clear as day. Now, if you’ll not step off the horse…” His hand went for his sword’s hilt, then drew it in one smooth motion. “Honestly, I prefer when things end up like this. Bringing you in for a ‘fair trial’ and all that is a farce - better to cut the lot of you down where you stand.”
Clara tried to pull the reins and turn her mount around, but she was too close to the Paladin - he lunged forwards with his sword, slicing the horse along its shoulder. The beast reared back and the Paladin was forced to step back to avoid being kicked by its flailing hooves, but the motion also pitched Clara from her saddle.
She landed hard on the dusty road, barely managing to keep hold of her staff, and scrambled to her feet just in time to see her horse bolting off down the road and the Paladin approaching her with his sword raised menacingly.
He surged towards Clara, his blade arcing down. She was able to maneuver her staff to block in time, metal biting deep into wood. It bought her a moment to step back and, as if just remembering that she had more than a wooden staff at her disposal, she conjured up a gout of flames to widen the gap.
The Paladin retreated smoothly, his stance unbroken by the flames licking at him. “And now you show your colours, witch,” he spat before advancing again. Clara loosed another burst of flames at him in an attempt to ward him off, but where the fire touched him it only produced faint wisps of golden light. He pressed through the inferno with his sword scything towards Clara’s neck. A hastily evoked barrier of shadowstuff kept the blade from finding any purchase, but it dispersed under the assault.
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The broken fragments of dark energy lingered in the air, and in the fraction of a second that she had bought Clara shaped them into needles that she thrust towards the Paladin. These gave him pause as they jabbed into him, thin enough to slip through the gaps in his chain, no doubt burning fiercely as she had so far observed from everything crafted from those shadows.
Clara took the opportunity to retreat a few more paces back, her free hand motioning to direct a thin line of fire into the form of her hellhound’s summoning circle. As soon as it was complete the demon was leaping through it - and not a moment to soon, as the Paladin had recovered from the piercing shadows, just in time to receive a few hundred pounds of infernal canine barreling into him.
The demon bore him down to the ground, its jaws opening wide. Hold, Clara commanded through the mental bond between them, and was almost surprised when the demon halted, dripping smoking saliva down onto the Paladin’s face.
“You’ve the better of me - seems I underestimated you. Finish it quick, then, if you will; I’d rather not spend any more time in your sort of company,” the Paladin said as Clara approached his prone form - despite his proclamation of defeat, his sword arm still flexed with the attempt to bring the weapon to bear, though it was adequately pinned by the hellhound’s foreclaw.
“You have me quite mistaken, Paladin. It would be quite easy to dispatch you now that I have you at my mercy,” she said with a flourish of her hand that brought shadows swirling around it - though she only sent them out as tendrils to remove the sword from the Paladin’s hand, leaving him clenching his fist, still struggling with futility against the hellhound’s weight. “Only, I do not see myself stooping to executing a disarmed and quite harmless foe. I will be on my way, and I hope this will quite dissuade you from pursuit,” she finished, her words accompanied by a flash of fire that consumed the Paladin’s blade, leaving it a molten ruin in only a few moments. She hoped that the act of mercy would be enough to get the Paladin to give up his pursuit, as it had with Gideon, but if it didn’t he would at least be slowed by acquiring new arms.
“What a sight - a merciful infernalist,” the Paladin laughed. “I’ll not be bewitched by whatever trickery you’re attempting here. Kill me now, or I will continue to hunt you to the ends of the earth,” he said, dashing Clara’s hopes.
Still, she hadn’t lied - she wasn’t yet to the point of executing an unarmed foe. With a twitch of her wrist, thick bands of shadow slithered forth to encircle the Paladin, wrapping him up tight. “Then I hope you won’t begrudge me taking this precaution to avoid just that. Perhaps after a few hours of thinking things over you will change your mind,” she said with finality, and stepped past him.
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The horse was nowhere in sight, no sign of it but for the small trail of blood it had left in its flight and some disturbed grass that Clara thought could be a sign of its path - or perhaps not. She had never had the opportunity to hunt and learn woodcraft as many other nobles had. She walked up to the smear of bloodied dirt, ignoring the struggled of the Paladin behind her, but she could glean nothing from it aside from the rough direction the horse had gone - off the road and into low rolling hills that surrounded them. As her hellhound padded up beside her, though, a thought came to her.
“Can you follow its scent?” she asked to it. It put its nose to the ground and the next second it was tearing off into the countryside. With a sigh, Clara started to follow it - now that the fighting was over and the admixture of adrenaline and infernal magic had left her, she felt somewhat leaden. Regardless, she put one foot in front of the other and went down the path of destroyed grass the hellhound left for her - much easier to follow than whatever signs the horse might have left.
The hellhound - or the trail it had left, at least - went in a relatively straight line, but much of it was up and down hillsides. After a few minutes of trudging along, Clara felt something through the bond between her and the demon. It took her a moment to realize what it was: the hellhound’s excitement at spotting its quarry. Before she could even think to issue a command for it to stop, a sensation of pure triumph washed over her - the hellhound had made its kill. She could almost see herself pouncing on the unwary horse, feel its hot blood on her tongue. Shaking her head to dispel the powerful impression, she let out another tired sigh and picked up her pace.
Cresting a final hill, Clara saw her hellhound at its foot already tearing chunks of flesh from the unfortunate steed. “I didn’t want you to kill it, you brute,” she scolded the hellhound with a thump on its shoulder that went entirely ignored, focused as it was on its meal. “Leave it alone for a minute. You can finish eating later.” The hellhound whined at her - a curious sound, coming from such a monstrous creature - and stepped back, though not before ripping off another mouthful of horseflesh.
Clara knelt down beside the ruined carcass that was once a horse, inspecting the saddle. The entire affair was smeared with blood, and she didn’t know enough to be certain of its state of repair, but at least none of the straps were broken, and the saddlebags’ buckles had stayed secure. She got to work unbuckling the saddle, and after a few minutes of fumbling around she had the whole tack separated from the corpse. “There we are. You may finish your meal now,” she told the hellhound as she turned away from the mess.
The noise of its resumed feeding followed her back up to the top of the hill, where she deposited the bloodied saddle onto the ground. She cleared a small patch of grass away with a blast of fire and then drew forth a thin line of shadow, weaving it from memory into the shape of a sigil. This she pressed into the dirt she had revealed beneath the scorched grass, imprinting the design into the earth.
Much more efficient than drawing it, she thought to herself as she inspected her handiwork. Deeming it adequate, she stood at the edge of the circle and started chanting. After the event of summoning the hellhound, she was prepared when she felt the mental connection between her and the Nightmare begin to form. It was not very dissimilar - the Nightmare was just as strong-willed and single-minded, though its particular obsession was the desire to simply run free and trample anything in its way. Forewarned, she asserted her sense of self and dominion over the demon with far more ease than the previous creature.
It appeared like the other demons had, in a small conflagration, neighing with a voice that crackled like a bonfire. The infernal steed was more than a match for any warhorse Clara had seen - not that that was a very large stock to pull from - and had a coat of deep black trimmed with fiery red hair, as well as, as the tome had indicated, eyes that burned like embers. “Be still,” Clara commanded it as it pawed the ground and shook its head, eagerness to be off towards the horizon radiating through the bond. “Stay calm while I get you tacked, and we’ll be back on the road all the sooner.”
Cowed, the demon went still as she gathered up the saddle and started buckling it on to her new steed. She wasn’t quite experienced in the process and it took a few minutes longer than she felt it should have, but she eventually had it looking right, and it seemed stable when she gave it a tug. The whole thing didn’t come apart when she swung up atop the saddle and took hold of the reins, so she decided that it was at the very least adequate. Repeating the trick the Holden had taught her to dismiss her hellhound, she started to lift the reins, but - most likely picking up on her intent through the bond - the Nightmare took off in a gallop without any need for instruction.
Clara realized that she must have cut something of a dreadful sight as the Nightmare tore back onto the road, with her dress stained in blood and astride a great beast that, in addition to its already fearsome appearance, left scorched hoofprints in its wake. Despite the breakneck pace it set - which Clara was thankful for, given the Paladin she had left behind - she didn’t find any great difficulty staying in the saddle. The demon also seemed to have unnatural reserves of stamina, as it didn’t slow one bit even as they blazed through one village, and then another, simply leaping over the few dumbfounded residents that happened to get in their way.
By the time the sun had started to set, Clara was well satisfied with the ground that she had covered. She was no experienced traveler, but surely the unceasing speed of the Nightmare had shaved days off of the journey already - and that was only within half a day of its summoning. Despite the growing gloom, she pushed on to the next village and dismounted just outside of it. After she had changed out of the bloodied dress and procured some coin from the saddlebags, she dismissed the Nightmare.
As she had hoped, the tack and saddle went with it, leaving her alone - aside from her imp, hiding away in her pack as it so often did, leaving her with no real reason to ever send it home. She idly wondered what it did with its days as she walked into the town and sought out an inn, and whether demons slept; she could imagine it curled up like a cat amongst her effects, napping the hours away.