Rita squinted, in a desperate attempt to block out the deadly beams of orange light, squeezing out from the gaps in the shutters and assaulting her sensitive eyes. But it was already too late. She had already opened them and received the morning suns full attack, currently sending her poor head careening into a world of pain.

Rita lightly blew some of the hair out of her face, it was currently quite a mess. She squinted hard, she really needed to get away from the fierce rising sun.

As she tried to prop herself up, her body felt really heavy. She immediately fell back down onto the pillow, her head suddenly swimming and the room seemingly unstable. She felt nauseous. This was too much, she simply laid there for a while bearing the harsh light in favour of recovering the rest of her condition and reigning in her foggy consciousness.

It was then that she finally noticed why her body had felt so heavy. There was a hand holding onto one of her breasts. Why was there a hand on her breast! It wasn’t her hand, it was a guys hand!

Her consciousness spurred itself onward, righting itself almost immediately as she panicked. With her thoughts much clearer than they had been just a moment ago, she noticed a man’s arm around her, attached to the offending hand.

She could feel him breathing into her neck now, each breath gently parting the hair on the nape of her neck. Rita slowly turned around, carefully not to wake whoever it is, fearing for the worst.

Once she had turned far enough to see Aaron’s face come into view, she sighed in relief.

Wait!

Why the hell should I be relieved at that! She remembered the party last night. She remembered drinking. Drinking a lot. She had stuff she had simply wanted to forget after all, a lot of stuff. She must have gotten pretty driuk to end up like this.

Rita was starting to feel very angry, he had taken advantage of her?

No, that can’t be right. He did not seem like the kind of person that would do something like that, not that she was an expert. But more so, despite being topless, she still and her pants on, so that was a good sign.

Rita slowly crept out from under his arm. Getting up from the bed, she quickly put her shirt back on. If he were to wake up right now and see her like that, she felt that she would die of embarrassment.

She had apparently done this, just in time. Aaron stirred and opened his eyes.

Rita just stood there, like a deer caught in headlights, no clue how to react to this situation.

Aaron simply smiled at her, “Good morning.”

Rita simply smiled back weakly. She wrapped her arms around herself nervously, as if he could still see her naked.

Aaron propped himself up in bed, “How you feeling?”

There was a look of genuine concern on his face and she couldn’t help but smile despite her reply, “I’ve been better.” After all, the room was still spinning around her, and her stomach felt rather determined to empty its contents all over the floor.

Aaron chuckled lightly, “I’m sure. After all you drank last night.”

The two of them remained silent for just a little while, simply staring at each other.

Aaron broke the silence, Rita being way too confused and nervous to do such a thing, “Look- I meant what I said last night, if you ever need a shoulder to cry on again, I’m here for you.”

Rita forced a really strained smile onto her face. Crying! Seriously! Not only had he seen her drunk, seen her naked, groped her breast, but he had even seen her crying! She really felt like dying right now.

Aaron, completely oblivious to her plight, carried on, “I meant what I said. You don’t have to be strong all the time- around me. Just lean on me when you need to, okay?”

“Thanks” Rita practically had to force the word out through her teeth, with that contorted smile still plastered on her face. God, she was definitely gonna find a river to go drown herself in.

Once they were both ready, they left the room together. The contorted mockery of a smile she wore on her face, had at some point become the genuine article.

After a rather quiet breakfast with the chief, well quiet between the two of them at any rate, the chief having had plenty of thanks and blessings to bestow upon them, they said their goodbyes and left.

Mara was waiting by the wagon, she had already finished loading it. This in and of itself, greatly alarmed Rita. Mara, being nice towards her, there was just no way!

After Mara checked things over with Rita in an equally disturbingly cordial manner, the three of them said their final goodbyes and once more set off for Zetsuna.

After a little bit of travelling with some light chatter amongst the three of them, mostly about how great the party was, most of which Rita was faking, as she remembered very little of it, Rita finally could not take it anymore and uncharacteristically of her, simply asked outright.

“Mara, why are you being so nice. You’re way to agreeable and obedient this morning, it’s seriously starting to worry me.”

Mara feigned rather obvious mock offence, before quickly giving up the pretense and simply replying, “I figured I should cut you some slack, you must have experienced a lot after all.”

Aaron was as shocked as Rita, this seemed rather out of character for the mischievous demoness.

Rita was also quite flustered, not sure how to respond to that. “I appreciate that Mara- Although if you don’t mind, I would rather not rehash what happened at the goblin camp.” She managed to blurt out in a small voice, practically stumbling over her own words.

“Huh?” Mara cocked her head to the side in a comical manner, before continuing with a shit eating grin on her face, “I’m talking about everything you must have experienced last night with this stud over here, deflowering you!” Mara patted Aaron on the shoulder for added effect, her rambunctious smile now totally out of control.

Rita just stared at her blankly for a second before she finally managed to process what had just transpired.

THAT DAMNABLE DEMON!

Rita could feel her face flushing an intense red, probably easily matching the color of her hair.

Said demon, was gasping for breaths between her out of control laughter.

“Oh- if only you could see the look on your face! Fucking priceless!” The laughter did not abate.

As Mara managed to reign it in a bit she turned to Aaron, “I hope it was good, after all, this guy turned down a night of fun with me for it. He left me high and dry in the end.” That last part she said while sending a glare his way that could stop a minotaurs heart. Aaron visibly gulped.

Rita was at her wits end by this point. She glared at Mara and held out the amulet in her direction, “Mara retu-”, but she stopped mid-sentence all of a sudden.

“Wait, what do you mean a night of fun?” This time her attention was firmly on Aaron, much to his chagrin.

“Um- no- Rita, it’s not what you think-”

“It’s not?” Mara unhelpfully chimed in, feigning hurt.

“No, I mean, who would be crazy enough to commit a taboo like that?”

“I guess you’re right.” Rita visibly deflated, some of her tension leaving her body.

“Wait!” She suddenly snapped, “How does you, who knows nothing about day to day life, know about the taboo for laying with unholy creatures?”

“No- wait- I can explain!”

“You slept with my demon?!” Rita practically shrilled.

Aaron no longer had words or excuses and simply bowed his head. Mara on the other hand was once more laughing out loud.

“Don’t worry, there’s no need to be jealous, I’m more than happy to share!” She just couldn’t help herself. “In fact, you should join us next time!”

“Not helping!” Aaron sneered at her.

Rita just hung her head. That headache had gotten a whole lot worse all of a sudden. This bloody deviant had his hands all over her last night! This was the worst! Rita had had enough of this crap.

She went over to the cart and untied the horse. After this she mounted the other horse and lead the first by the reigns, leaving the cart behind.

“Mara, I order you to pull the cart.”

At these words Mara’s laughter suddenly stopped and her shoulders slumped. She did not look very happy.

“Um- what about me” Aaron nervously inquired despite himself.

“You? Why you can’t just leave Mara like that, can you? You should walk beside your demon lover until we get to Zetsuna”, she responded in an incredibly icy tone.

Aaron sighed. It wasn’t a long distance to Zetsuna, relatively speaking, but it was going to be a really long trip!

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

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Mezza laid back lazily on one of the luxurious cushioned benches, his legs twisted around each other with one foot twitching from side to side, lazily. He was getting a little annoyed however. It had been a long trip and he couldn’t quite get these ‘luxurious benches’ to feel quite right. No matter how he tried, they always came out a bit on the hard side.

This whole thing was a bother. If it was just him, he could have just flown all the way here, but alas the three of them had been sent together.

Metosys could probably catch a lift from some kind of avian if he really wanted to, but Mezza had never seen him doing such a thing in all these years, despite the obvious convenience. Mezza suspected that the man was probably afraid of heights or something. His excuse was normally along the lines of he did not want to disrespect such majestic creatures, as to use them for something as trivial as transport, bla, bla, bla. But Mezza highly doubted such bullshit, given the way he normally makes use of creatures.

Metosys caught Mezza looking at him while pondering this, and Mezza quickly looked away. Honestly, the guy really creeped Mezza out. He was a tall and bulky man, always covered from head to toe in clothing.

Today was no different, wearing a thick green cloak with gold trimmings, complete with a hood, draped over his entire body. He had large brown boots sticking out the bottom and black leather gloves on his hands, extending up his arms, under the cloak. His face too was hidden by a brown mask, with a stony expression.

Mezza had gotten a look under Metosys’ mask once before. Well, kind of. It was a rare occasion where he had caught him while he was putting it on. And just for a moment, even though it was dark and his face was pretty much shrouded by a cloak, he could swear he saw things moving in the darkness where his face should be. Mezza had not slept well for a week after that, so now he tended to avoid making direct eye contact with the creepy man.

“Hey, are we almost there yet?” A childlike voice asked, “My butt hurts, these seats are way too hard.”

Tssk. Everybody’s a critic.

The person currently voicing this opinion was Anderyll. The midget had been complaining non-stop ever since they departed. Anderyll was currently laying on the floor of the wagon, apparently deeming the nice red seats no less soft than the intricately patterned dark oak floor boards of the carriage. Ungrateful brat. Anderyll was currently spinning one of his kunai knives around a finger, seemingly idling away time in a relaxed posture. Yet its blue eyes staring out through its overly long black bangs left quite a different impression. Its eyes were always sharp. Its gaze ever penetrating, like you were just a moment away from death and you drew breath only because it did not currently have any reason to kill you, a truly unnerving person.

Mezza referred to Anderyll as ‘it’, because honestly, he had no idea of Anderyll’s gender, despite this motley crew having worked together on and off for two years already. Sometimes he could swear Anderyll behaved and sounded like a guy, other times, like a girl. Its body was ridiculously androgynous, so that didn’t help either. And no way was he ever going to be suicidal enough to risk offending by actually asking.

Honestly, he could never truly let his guard down around it, even though, in all this time, Anderyll had never once attempted to kill him, that he knew of, he could just never relax around it.

“Aaaargh! I’m so bored!” And now it was resorting to throwing a tantrum, just fantastic!

Mezza sighed, “Metosys, how far are we?”

“We’ll be there soon.” Metosys responded in a deep voice.

“There you have it Anderyll, so shut up, will ya.”

Anderyll simply responded by sticking his tongue out at Mezza’s snarky remark. Why that little pipsqueak!

That moment a small blue bird came fluttering down and landed on Metosys’ shoulder. Mezza simply waited for Metosys to finish. Once the little bird flew off again, Metosys simply said, “Turn left here.”

Mezza followed his lead and made the carriage turn left. The two pitch black stallions, with their ghostly red glowing eyes and manes made out of actual fire immediately started pulling the carriage to the left, seemingly without any instruction.

Metosys just gave Mezza a long hard look. At least Mezza thought he was staring at him, you could never exactly be sure with that mask on him. After a while it started to unnerve Mezza a bit too much and he finally broke the silence, “What?”

“Honestly, I wonder sometimes why you waste your energy like this? There’s no one else around to even see it, It’s really pointless.”

“Pointless your say? Hah!” Mezza could only snort derisively. “My dear Metosys even if no one can see these majestic creatures, we still can.”

“They’re really not that impressive. Maybe the first or the second time, but now…”

“Hey, I think they’re suuuppeeer cool!”, Anderyll suddenly butted into the conversation, giving Mezza a thumbs up, that he unequivocally ignored.

He did however respond, “Well what would you have me do, dispel them! Then we’d just be three people riding in a fancy carriage that is driving on it’s own.”

“No, I mean- in the first place, why even bother with the fancy carriage?”

“You can not be serious. You want the three of us to simply float along through the air! How dumb would that look!” Mezza was practically outraged at this point.

“No, again, there’s no one else here to see it-”

“SO?! As I’ve already said, we’ll see it.”

Metosys stopped at this point and turned around, clearly having given up. He was never the persistent sort to begin with.

Mezza on the other hand was still quite annoyed. These damned uncultured savages have no appreciation for true art. Sure the horses weren’t much other than some eye-candy, he had not bothered with much more than some basic illusions for them after all.

But the carriage on the other hand. Oh, what an exquisite piece it was, one of his best works to date. Not only was the illusion of the carriage sublimely realistic and detailed, but the telekinetic forces employed to give it physical substance were so detailed, that if you touched your hand to the wooden floor, you could actually feel the grain of the wood.

Let’s not even get started on the incredible seats that everyone was complaining about. Self sustaining adaptive telekinetic forces with spring like internal weave, that acted similar to how soft bedding or other such cushioning would when you sit on it! A masterpiece of mental manipulation if ever there was one.

He should have made these damned ingrates ride on nothing more than flat telekinetic disc with no other modifications. Then see how they complain about their asses being sore, when they spend a couple of days riding on something that’s as hard as steel.

Mezza sighed. It was rather taxing to maintain such complex work for such a long time though, just like Metosys suggested. But he didn’t regret it, it was after all a labour of love!

“We’re here.” Metosys finally announced.

The three men looked around as the carriage trudged along, way more silently than such an outlandish ride had any right to be.

“You sure we’re in the right place?” The question Mezza asked was of course more rhetorical than anything else. He would never doubt Metosys’ ability to find something. And beside the large swathes of forest that had been burnt to a blackened crisp were a dead giveaway that something was up.

“There.” Metosys pointed to a large pile of rubble that had just come into view, as they rounded the corner of a nearby hill.

“What the heck happened here?” Mezza asked no one in particular, while staring at the fast approaching pile of rubble, blackened charcoal and the barely remains of some former stone walls.

“Seems it happened about a week ago.” Was the only response he got from Metosys.

Once they arrived, Mezza dispelled the illusions and slowly lowered the three of them to the ground.

Anderyll immediately started running through the burnt grass and twirling around with its arms outstretched, “Yay! No more hard carriage, no more stupid boring travelling.” It was using it’s feminine voice now and even gigging a little in the process.

Mezza ignored its antics and started sifting through the rubble, with his powers.

After a while he gave up, “This is too tedious. Metosys, see if you kind find any corpses or anything else of importance.”

Metosys simply closed his eyes and stood there silently. It wasn’t long however before all manner of bugs and insects were coming out of the ground and crawling in from all directions, ultimately swarming the huge pile of rubble. There would be no inch of this place left unsearched by the time Metosys was finished.

Despite being rather quiet, lazy and laid back in general, the guy could be very thorough when he wanted to.

After a while, things quieted down, the ground no longer looked like it was alive and squirming.

“Well, anything?” Mezza just outright asked. He knew that if he waited for Metosys to report on his findings on his own, the guy could stand there for half a day before he bothered to say anything.

“No-ones here.”

“Hhmm. So they all betrayed us and ran away? I know she wasn’t exactly the straight up kind, but this seems a bit out of character.”

“There is something strange over there though.” Mezza followed the direction Metosys was pointing in, to where Anderyll was already waiting, crouching.

“What he means is that there is no one here that’s alive” Anderyll remarked while grinning from ear to ear.

He was no doubt eagerly waiting to see what manner of corpses we were about to find. And when did he get over there anyway? One of the things that made the little rat so scary was his ability to move around without you noticing a thing. It really creeped Mezza out.

Of course, unlike most other people, he could easily track Anderyll if he tapped into its mind a bit, but to be honest he would rather not do that, no matter how unnerving the brat was.

Once. Only once had he attempted such a thing. Looking into Anderylls mind for just a single moment, was not something he ever wanted to experience again. He still shuddered at the memory of it. Some stones were just better left unturned.

Mezza walked up to the spot where it was waiting eagerly, and began clearing away rubble. Mostly burnt logs and planks, and even what appeared to be some iron bars that was probably part of a prison cell originally. What was left by the time he was finished, was a hole, with a ladder, leading underground.

“After you” Mezza motioned to Anderyll. Let the scary kid go down the scary hole, that’s all.

“Don’t mind if I do!’ Anderyll replied with a bright smile, before simply ignoring the ladder all together and just jumping straight down the dark hole in the ground.

Mezza could only sigh in exasperation. “You still alive down there?”

“Huh, why wouldn’t I be?” Came the echoing reply from somewhere down below. Well, guess it isn’t deep enough to kill you. Pity.

Mezza and Metosys took turns to climb down the ladder and when they reached the bottom, walked through a passageway to a chamber where Anderyll was waiting for them. The air here was stale and filled with the stench of smoke and cinder, even more so than on the surface.

Anderyll held a bright glowing stone in the palm of his hand, that was more than sufficient to light up the entire room. He was currently crouching over two dead bodies examining them with a macabre interest.

Mezza in the meantime examined the contents of the room. The floor had many runic designs carved into it, same for the walls. Some of them he of course recognised. Enough to know that they were in the right place. The other equipment left in the room also left no question as to this places purpose.

Mezza walked up to one of the walls and touched it. He couldn’t keep himself from whistling in admiration.

“What?” Anderyll enquired. It knew that it was almost impossible to impress someone like Mezza. So this had its curiosity up, even more than the corpses in front of it.

“It’s obsidian. The whole bloody thing! This is some serious business. Heck I don’t even recognise most of these runes.”

He then walked over to the corpses and gave Anderyll an expectant look.

“They match the description given for Dianna and her pet zombie.”

“What of the daughter?”

Anderyll simply shrugged, so Mezza turned his attention to Metosys instead.

“There isn’t anyone else around for miles, dead or alive, far as I can tell.” He answered.

“So what happened here, then? Summoning gone bad? Killed by her own demon?” Anderyll fired of questions, almost giddily.

“Doubt it. I mean, where’s the sacrifice then, there should be at least one strangers body here then. More likely the sacrifice himself did this.”

Mezza sat a few more moments in contemplation, drumming his fingers against the stubble on his chin.

“I can’t tell if the summoning was finished or not, but it looks like the sacrifice made off with both the amulet and the daughter, otherwise we should have found those things here still.”

“So what now? Boss is not gonna like this.”

“Our job is done here. I’ll go report this, above ground. Zero reception down here with these walls.”

Mezza made his way back above ground and immediately established a connection. It was a bit shaky due to the long distances involved, but a voice came through quite clearly.

“What have you got for me Mezza?” The gruff voice echoed inside Mezza’s head.