The wind was picking up. Offilo closed his eyes and listened. He heard the crunch of pebbles behind him. He didn’t open his eyes to look, despite the urge.

Suddenly, a change in the wind.

Offilo turned to his right and swung his sword.

He felt the impact as he heard the metallic clank.

“You're a fast learner”, the demon said. “Open your eyes.”

“T-thank you”, he replied reluctant, and fought the urge to back away from her as she was surrounded by a vortex of naked black blades without handles.

“Don’t thank me”, she replied amused and switched the patter her blades floated in with a flick of her hand. “Our master has instructed me to avoid maiming you. If I were not bound by his orders, I wouldn’t have been so lenient and easygoing.”

Offilo tensed up and let out a nervous chuckle.

Suddenly, the demon swivelled her head to the right like a bird of prey. Uncertain as to what had caught her attention this way, Offilo barely managed to follow her gaze but saw nothing.

“A strong magic user has entered the city”, she murmured and made her blades disappear. “Could it be…”

“The man you’ve talked about with Lord Rosomil… Do you think it’s him?”, he asked.

“Most certainly”, she replied, tense, while her whole body radiated caution. “I need to check.”

“What about my training? Our master told you to train me until late afternoon, and now it’s barely midday.”

Offilo immediately regretted his forwardness and made himself smaller under her burning gaze. As he expected some nasty spell or some of her blades to be thrown at him, nothing of the like happened. Instead, the demon’s features softened into a thoughtful expression.

“Are you hungry?”, she asked a moment later. “You didn’t have much of a breakfast.”

“I am. But just a tiny bit”, he replied, tense as he would rather not to be standing in her way.

That very moment, his stomach growled like an angry beast.

“You’re a poor liar”, she laughed. “There’s no use in continuing your training, if we run the danger of you passing out. Besides, I know exactly where our master’s enemies are currently located. The Merry Boar. It’s an inn close to the western gate. So we’ll hit two birds with one stone, boy. We get you something to eat, and I can have a look at our master's enemies.”

“But how do we get there?”

“Simple. We fly.”

“Fly?”

“Have you repressed the memory of the first of the worst hugs of your life?”

“Oh God, no”, he breathed while backing away but found himself already engulfed in her wings.

The jump into the air almost made his stomach turn itself out. Then, as sudden as he had been thrown into the air, they landed. The demon pulled her wings back to form a black dress and walked past him, while he collapsed on his knees.

“I didn’t cause any undue attention, it seems”, the demon said once she had returned to his side. “Hey, boy, how long do you intend to study the texture of the ground?”

“I need a moment”, he replied breathless.

“You had more than one already”, she remarked, and pulled him up on his feet by the collar of his shirt.

“I’m sorry! Please don’t hurt me!”

“I’ll hurt you if you keep on shouting or apologising!”, she hissed and showed her sharp teeth in the process.

Offilo took a deep breath and bit his tongue. Seemingly happy with his silence, the demon let down on his feet — he hadn’t even noticed that she had lifted him a few inches off the ground. Without waiting for him, she headed to the end of the narrow ally they had landed.

Not wanting to be left alone somewhere in the city without really knowing his way around, he ran after her. This, in turn, resulted in him running into her a few moments later. Offilo immediately froze.

But the demon just pulled him to her side and smoothed his blond hair down, like a mother or big sister would. Fully confused, he let himself be let by his hand down the street, towards a huge stone building with a timbered second and third storey. The people in front of it hastily made place for them without further reaction.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

The demon stopped in front of the entrance and grinned mischievously at Offilo. A moment later, she entered it and pulled him after herself.

The air on the inside was warm and smelled of food. Offilo could barely keep himself from drooling, let alone his stomach from grumbling in impatience. Still, he had enough wits remaining, to scan the patrons for the man the demon had spoken about. The majority of them looked just like the sad people on the street. But a pair at one table immediately drew all of his attention in.

The woman was blond and almost ethereal in her beauty. The man, who sat in front of her, was a giant, nearly two meters tall, with long coppery hair. Next to him stood a worn travelling bag, while a sword leaned between him and the wall against the table.

“You’ve noticed them as well, haven’t you?”, the demon asked him in a hushed tone as one of the waiters was approaching them.

Before he could answer, the young man arrived at their side.

“Welcome to the Merry Boar”, greeted them. “A table for two, I presume? Does Milady have any preferences? Currently, we have a few empty ones on the window side facing the street.”

“Excellent!”, she replied, much happier than the rest of the patrons appeared to be on a good day. “A seat at the window would be perfect! My brother likes to watch the going-ons on the street.”

“Very well, please follow me”, the waiter replied and led them towards a table in the proximity of the giant and the blonde lady.

Offilo didn’t like being so close to the pair, even though they were seated with two tables between them. Something about them was off-putting to him, but he couldn’t tell what it was. He also couldn’t really look at them without staring, which didn’t seem too wise. No matter the Divine Lord’s demon presence or the fact that the redhead looked like he could crush him with one hand.

“It’s certainly them”, the demon whispered to Offilo, once the waiter had left them after taking their orders.

“And what do we do?”, he asked — somehow it felt worse to have the pair at his back where he couldn’t see them, instead of running the danger of staring at them.

“We sit, eat, and wait, boy”, she continued, a bit too eager for his liking.

“And what if they… what if they find out who we are?”

“Then I use you as a meat shield while having fun.”

Offilo felt the colour drain from his face, something that made the demon chuckle.

“Don’t worry about it, boy”, she continued. “As long as I don’t attack, I doubt she’ll be able to identify me as what and who I truly am.”

“Is she a witch?”, he asked, uncertain after the demon hadn’t continued speaking.

“You could call her that, but the correct name for her kind is nephilim”, she explained, a bit more serious. “Half human, half fallen angel. Judging by her aura, she’s ancient and powerful. She must be a survivor of the flood.”

That moment, the waiter came back with their food. Silently he arranged everything on their table and, after a short inquiry about more wishes, he left them once more. Offilo used the break to look at his food — a thick stew in an earthen bowl. It smelled lovely, and the meat inside it looked better than everything he had eaten before. To his surprise, the demon had taken the same dish and was already stabbing a bit of meat on her knife to eat while holding a slice of grey bread underneath it to catch the dripping sauce. He tried to mimic her to not draw too much attention to them. A moment later, he found himself in a culinary heaven.

“Don’t space off”, the demon remarked with a smirk, and made his dream of food-heaven burst like a bubble. “You’re quite the airhead, aren’t you?”

“My mother used to say the same thing”, he replied, melancholic.

For a split second, her smirk turned into a softer, almost gentle smile. There was certainly compassion within her, but Offilo didn’t dare to explore further.

“What was it you said about the woman?”, he asked quiet instead and leaned a bit towards the demon. “She’s powerful?”

“Certainly”, she replied after eating another bite. “She’s constantly keeping an illusion up without it being too obvious.”

“She’s currently using magic?”

“Yes. I bet it’s because she would look too inhuman to be around people. Still, she isn’t perfect. I bet you felt it as well as the waiter, if you look at her for long enough, or you’ve experience with magic, you’ll instinctively notice that something’s off. But she also uses some sort of charm when she talks. I doubt she does it on purpose or is even aware of it, but the effect is imminent. She inadvertently draws people’s attention, especially men’s, towards herself. Most women probably don’t like her much because of it as well. Anyway, the side effect should be her greatest advantage as she’ll always draw the attention from her companion to herself, hiding him in the process.”

“What about him?”

“He’s complicated. I need to take a closer look, but doing so would compromise us. But what I can tell from here is that he seems alive and dead at the same time.”

“H-how is that possible?”

“Imperfect resurrection. What helps him remain stable is the fact that it’s his own soul in his own body. But it’s only a question of time before the soul fully breaks apart, as it can’t leave. It’s like the soul wants to leave and find rest, but can’t because the body works as a prison.”

“That sounds awful.”

“If done correctly, it makes the soul unable to leave the body even when the body is fully crushed or strewn into pieces. The only way to truly end this existence would be to undo the bindings of the soul, which is a complicated, time-intensive ordeal. That is, if you’re not the one who cast the spell in the first place. A true resurrection, on the other hand, just recreates the normal union of soul and body and is easily ended like by any other mortal.”

“Can you undo the spell?”

“Only once he got separated from his arms and legs. If he can’t flay around, I can read the spell keeping his soul and release it.”

“Can you perform such a resurrection yourself, then? What about a perfect one?”

“In this world, I can only perform imperfect resurrections. Do you have any ambitions towards becoming my undead thrall?”

“Heavens no!”, Offilo replied shocked and immediately shrunk on his seat as some patrons were staring at him.

“Suite yourself”, the demon replied, amused, and continued to eat.

Offilo followed her example. All the while, he wondered about what they were going to do once they had finished their lunch. They couldn’t stay indefinitely in the inn. Not only was their master expecting them to be still within the castle grounds, but the giant man and the witch were bound to notice them eventually.