Azure groaned as she watched the glowing red western horizon. “The sun’s already almost set. This is gonna be tight.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Do you two think you can stand to go a little faster?”

“I’m fine,” Ariya said.

“Of course you are,” Lusya said. “You do not need to do anything.”

She already had to carry Ariya in order to keep pace with Azure. Though Azure had not raised her speed above a brisk walk, Ariya had still struggled to keep up over extended periods of time. If they moved much faster, though, they would be running to the next town.

“However, I can still handle higher speeds,” Lusya said. “Do keep in mind that I cannot keep up with your top speed.”

Azure nodded. “Yeah, I know.” She looked to the west again and sighed. “What do you think about pressing on through the night for a little bit?”

“I think that would interfere with Ariya’s sleep,” Lusya said. “She is already tired, and she cannot get proper rest at this speed.”

“I’m not tired,” Ariya said before releasing a long yawn.

Azure cast one more glance at the horizon. The sky was stained orange there while it rapidly darkened above. They were close enough to the mountains that the sun was setting behind them, just barely peeking out behind a relatively low one. The nights were longer than days now, if only just. As winter encroached and the nights began to dominate, Lusya would begin traveling through the night a bit. For now, stopping just after dark provided a good cadence that seemed to suit Ariya’s needs as well. It was doubtful she would sleep well while being jostled by movement throughout the night.

Azure sighed. “You’re right, of course. We’ll stop once it gets dark and pick up the pace tomorrow.”

“I suppose that is satisfactory,” Lusya said.

They got in maybe another fifteen minutes of walking before it was time to stop. With Azure setting such a rapid pace, they covered quite some distance in that time.

Azure was hurried even as they set up camp, though that had little bearing on their overall pace. She set up the tent and fire for cooking in record time. Lusya set up the pot, and, while she was doing that, Azure grabbed some ingredients from Lusya’s pack and all but threw them at her. It had looked like Azure had grabbed the ingredients frantically at random, but they were, in fact, the right ingredients in the proper proportions for a particular recipe, albeit she had not consulted anyone else on if they wanted that dish. Still, Lusya was not particular, and it was usually a safe bet with Ariya, so Lusya saw no reason to make an issue of it.

They took turns cooking, every other day, with days spent at inns not counting. Azure’s cooking was comparable to Lusya’s, perhaps a bit worse. That was perhaps to be expected of a woman of Azure’s status. She would likely only cook during solo missions, if then. During the war, she might have often had companions to handle it or been provided rations that didn’t require much or any preparation before eating. So, she had learned to do it well enough to get by and no more. Lusya, meanwhile, had to worry about satisfying Ariya’s particular tastes.

When the meal was done, Azure even wolfed it down at triple her normal eating speed. Although, impressively, this increase in speed brought with it only a marginal decrease in neatness. Ariya stared at her with brow furrowed in concern, while Lusya cocked her head and blinked twice.

“Wow,” Ariya said. “That was kind of cool to watch, but are you okay?”

Azure gave a confused frown. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Why are you in such a hurry?” Lusya asked. “It gives the impression that you are concerned about an urgent matter.”

Azure gave a nervous laugh. “Oh, it’s nothing dangerous, so don’t worry. I just want to get to the next town by a certain day.” She clicked her tongue and scowled. “And, of course, I forgot to account for the hot springs taking us out of the way, and now it’s going to take us forever to get to the closest town that doesn’t involve backtracking.”

“What is this day?” Lusya asked. “And why is it so important that we are in town for it?”

Azure smiled. “It’s a surprise. Just trust me.”

“Considering how your last surprise went, that is a bold request,” Lusya said.

“Technically, my last surprise was the hot spring.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Your last explicitly labeled surprise, then.”

Azure sighed. “That’s fair. But believe me, this time will be different.”

Lusya blinked. “There will not be a third time if you fail.”

“Then I’d better not fail, huh?” Azure replied.

“I believe in you!” Ariya proclaimed, waving her spoon in the air. “Go, Azure!”

“Well, now I’d doubly better not fail,” she said. In a facetious tone, she added, “Thanks for the pressure, Ariya.”

Ariya giggled and took another bite of her food.

“I am curious,” Lusya said. “How did your encounter with Father go?”

It was a rather spontaneous question. She had been wondering about it since Azure had first brought it up, but it was only now that she had decided to ask. She did not know why.

Azure frowned. “Didn’t I already give you the cliff notes? I’m happy to repeat myself if you want, but…”

“The fight, specifically,” Lusya said. “You did not give many details beyond him letting you strike and you refusing to kill him.”

“Ooh, I wanna hear the story of you fighting the Demon King too,” Ariya said.

Azure pursed her lips and stared into the fire, then shrugged. “I guess there’s no harm in it, but it’s not that interesting of a story. I had the upper hand at first. I might have underestimated him, but I wasn’t exactly expecting him to be a pushover, so I downplayed my Malice and went for a surprise attack.”

“You must have been skilled to do so against Father’s senses,” Lusya said.

“He was nowhere near his peak, of course, but yes, I was skilled back then too,” Azure said. “Of course, he did pick up on what was happening eventually. Just in time to dodge my first attack, in fact. That put him on the backfoot, but he was still good enough that I couldn’t land a decisive blow.

“Then he got his footing and turned the tables pretty hard. He trounced me for a while, but I eventually managed to adapt and make a bit of a comeback. I was still losing, but I was holding my own. I guess that’s when he decided I was strong enough to kill him if he’d let me. So, one time when I went for an attack, he didn’t defend. He dropped his guard and tried to let me stab him…” she gestured to herself, presumably indicating roughly the spot her blow would have landed. “…straight through his chest.”

“I am grateful that you were not able to do so,” Lusya said. “But why?”

Azure spoke of Father with a sort of admiration. She seemed to find him both noble and tragic in a way, and it seemed they had gotten along well during their association. However, Azure could not have known that any of that would come to pass at the time. She had implied before that Father’s own conflicted feelings about his existence had stayed her hand, but it seemed doubtful she had known of that either beforehand.

“There were a couple reasons,” Azure said. “For one thing, I thought it was some kind of trap. But mainly, it was his eyes. The look in them. So sad and resigned. It was hard to feel like killing him after I saw that. Of course, I demanded to know what he was doing, and he explained. He wanted me to kill him before the hatred of the world and his own instincts as the Demon King drove him to try to bring the world to ruin.”

“I see,” Lusya said. “What was he doing at the time, if he was not interested the usual goal of a Demon King?”

“When I found him, he was finishing off a demon that was causing trouble,” Azure said. “In general, he was wandering Midbud helping people and doing odd jobs. He never stayed in one spot for long. Even some people with no motomancy ability can have a certain reaction to the Demon King, so he couldn’t afford to linger.”

That explained his name. “Romoro,” meaning “Wandering One.” Lusya had never known the full context behind it.

“Anyway, once he was done, he asked me to kill him. I refused, of course, and added another reason for doing so.” Azure laughed. “I really didn’t want to do anything the Demon King told me to.”

“I get that,” Ariya said. “Sometimes when someone says something, you just want to do the opposite.”

“I have observed that being contrarian can be a powerful motivator,” Lusya said.

“You’ve observed right,” Azure said with a smirk. “That’s about the long and short of it. A bunch happened afterward, of course, but we’d be here all night if I tried to tell you about all of it.”

“Couldn’t you break it down?” Ariya said. “And you could pick up where you left off tomorrow.”

“I could,” Azure said. “But I’d probably need to sit down and decide how to do that. It would probably come out pretty confusing and disjointed if I just tried to tell it on the spot.”

Ariya groaned in protest.

“It is time for you to sleep anyway, Ariya,” Lusya said. “Do not groan again.”

Ariya shut her mouth just before doing so. She huffed and crossed her arms.

“I’m sure I’ll tell you the rest someday,” Azure said. “But only if you’re good for Lusya.”

“Can I at least write a little before I go to bed?” Ariya asked.

She had been working on whatever she was writing intermittently as they traveled through the valley. She wrote in Slarvish, and her penmanship was quite good, but Lusya had caught only hints of the project’s contents thus far, and only when she happened to glimpse the page while Ariya was writing. If Ariya noticed Lusya looking, she would stop writing and hide the paper until Lusya moved on. Up to now, Lusya estimated that Ariya had written about fifty pages. That was about half of Lusya’s paper supply, so she hoped Ariya was close to done. There was not much space for more. She mainly wrote when they stopped for camp or at an inn.

“You should have done so before dinner if you intended to, as per usual,” Lusya said. “It is time for you to rest now.”

“But I didn’t feel like it then,” Ariya whined.

“You know it is bedtime after dinner. It is your responsibility to manage your free time accordingly.”

Ariya huffed, crossed her arms, and pouted.

“A page or two can’t hurt,” Azure said.

“Compromise now opens the door to greater compromise later,” Lusya said. “I am not budging on this.”

Azure threw a sympathetic smile at Ariya. “I tried.”

“Fine, I’ll go to bed,” Ariya said, standing up.

“Ariya,” Lusya said, “what are you writing about?”

Ariya grinned. “Can I stay up if I tell you?”

Lusya shook her head. “No. I am just curious.”

Despite being rebuffed, Ariya’s smile did not falter in the slightest. “Well then, it’s a secret. Good night, Lusya!”

Then she skipped to the tent and vanished inside without another word.