"What better place to hide a secret than there where everyone looks but no one sees?"

The Featherdame.

----------------------------------------

They had barely spoken on the way back. Derren had been too busy questioning all his beliefs, and Demi directing all her strength into her shuffling legs, knackered and not saying a word.

The huntress of Serpentia had left for Daxos, for she had some work to do in the sapphire cave, she had explained. "Heterochromia," she had said. Was she a demon then? No. A daughter of the guardians, he remembered hearing Ysbra say. How did she know? He had never heard of it. He had never seen anything like it. Such a fire set by a scrawny little girl. How was it possible?

Derren was giving the matter some thought even when they arrived back at the inn. At first, it was a rather cold reception. But it got better when Derren assured them that the dragonfly was dead. The peasants raised their arms to heaven, kissed the earth, knelt down to pray to the spirits.... Some cried, others sang, and some even uncorked a bottle of uaga and began to sprinkle the people as was done during the solstice festivities.

That night those responsible for the landmark had dinner and slept on the house. There they met the bald hunter and the toasted one who, visibly, had given up the mission after smelling danger. Wise choice, Derren had to admit. The woodsmen came over to thank them for the job and congratulate them on the feat. But Derren knew the credit was not theirs. He couldn't get what had happened at the top of the bluff out of his mind.

The heat, the fire, Demi's eyes. I still felt chills. Fear. He feared the thing that had saved his life. That which had destroyed the dragonfly like an ant. Such a great power hidden in such a small body? He went to sleep with mixed thoughts.

The next morning, the sun was shining in the sky and Derren looked down at the ground as they passed between the adobe houses to leave the village on a path flanked by stones on both sides and the occasional weed. He felt strange. There was a lump in his throat and something tightened in his stomach. Nerves.

“What are you going to do now?” Demi asked.

“I haven't thought about it yet. The dragonfly seems to have chased away all the cerberus. I don't think I'm needed around here at the moment. There's plenty of work up north, but gorgons are not my specialty, and I don't like snakes. I may take some time to train.”

“Will you stay in the Thousand Kingdoms?”

Derren had never considered going out. What for? He didn't even know every corner of his land, how could he try to explore a place a hundred times more vast? Where to begin? Until then, he had only been concerned with hunting monsters. That was what he had been trained for. But the truth was that at that moment he was curious about the secrets the world hid. Beyond the Pass, beyond Mohad, even. The unknown West. Maybe it was time for a change of scenery.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Maybe not. Maybe it's time to give up my hunter's buckle. After all, if it hadn't been for you, I'd be dead. The dragonfly defeated me,” he thought about it, pausing. “Yes... I think I'll get out of here.”

“Where will you go?”

“Wherever my boots take me,” he said, and gave her a sidelong glance. “And you?”

“An old man once told me that if I was ever afraid of myself, to go to the islands of the Rim,” she clarified with nervousness surfacing in her voice.

Suddenly, Derren was seized with the need to know. To know what it was that had saved him. And he had to ask.

“Demi...” he rasped. He had no idea how to phrase a question like that, so he opted to just throw it out there. “Are you... a demon?”

He felt as if he was getting rid of a heavy ballast and the knot in his throat was released. What answer did he expect to get? What answer would he prefer to hear? Would it change anything, a yes or a no?

The girl looked him in the face. Derren wasn't good at reading people's eyes. But hers were a clean, blurry gray. At once hazy and transparent. A gray that showed fear and bewilderment, confusion and insecurity, but also confidence.

They were a paradox in themselves, but they were not evil. Derren had seen evil in many eyes, and there he did not find it. He decided he didn't need an answer. He decided that those could not be the eyes of a demon.

“I don't know,” Pira paused before exhaling a sigh and dropping her shoulders regretfully. “I don't know.”

The hunter put a hand on her shoulder trying to comfort her. He thought about the road he would have to take to go to those islands on the rim he had never heard of. Anyway, the port cities of the Thousand Kingdoms were to the south. So Demi would have to go to Endas, where she would board some merchant ship with tiny cabins. He was a man of the mainland, but he could accompany her at least as far as the port and see what opportunities would be available to him there.

“The road to Endas is full of dangers for a little girl like you,” Derren commented. “And there are steps where they ask for money to let you pass. Do you have any money, Demi?”

“No.”

The hunter pulled his money pouch out of his duffel bag and shook it to jingle the coins inside.

“Accept mine. You saved my life.”

“And you saved it for me. We are at peace.”

“Demi...” Derren snorted.

“My name's not really Demi.” She gently pushed away the hand holding the bag and looked into his eyes with that intense gray gaze. “My name is Pira.”

Derren smiled. He had never heard that name before, but it seemed nice and appropriate, although he didn't know why. The girl aroused in him an enormous curiosity.

“All right, Pira. If you don't accept my money...”

“If the road to Endas is full of dangers and I go that way with money,” she interrupted. “I will be the prey of brigands and looters.”

Just then they reached the end of the stone–lined trail and entered a narrower, wilder one in the middle of the tall grass that split in two. One path went into the forest rising to the north, while the other went around it and veered south.

“You are right, Pira. Then, there's only one way left for me to return the favor. I will go with you.”

Pira smirked, and Derren read a hint of relief on her face. His mind was made up. He would go with her. He would find out all about what this guardians thing meant. About heterochromia. He would find out more about that incendiary power.

After walking for several hours in the heat of the sun, they stopped to sit on a huge, lonely stump they saw on the side of the road. The hunter opened his pack and began to rummage through what was left of the cheese and bacon. He felt Pira's little head peek out beside him and then....

“Derren!” she shouted in a tone somewhere between surprise and horror. “Tell me that's not what I think it is!”

“Okay, Pira,” the hunter's smile couldn't have been wider. “That's not a dragonfly egg.”