The size of theDaemoenica’sharvests expanded with time and experience.Pride found ways to manipulate his sin, mixing it with his kin when they accompanied him.It grated at him to discover that pride complimented envy particularly well, despite their opposing tendencies.
Dressed as a vagrant, he slunk into a new town lying on the outskirts of a larger capital.Farmers tended robust fields of grain beyond the village proper.A series of stone buildings with thatched roofs made up the majority of dwellings, dotted along the edges of crisscrossing dirt roads.An irritating drizzle rained on Saer’s hood.Bits of moisture touched his nose and evaporated immediately upon contacting his Hellsfire flesh.
Saer had dismissed Runeak weeks prior to take their latest bounty to Lucifer.Intermingling pride and wrath amongst humans always proved explosive and resulted in a body count in the double digits.Lucifer would be pleased.
One of his other kin would join him before too long.
Learn the culture.Gain trust.Pull sins.
Don’t develop attachment to the humans.Ruki taught him that.Even years later when the boy came to mind, Saer found something to distract himself from the alienating discomfort it brought.
End the ones who promised themselves to theDaemoenica.Steal their souls and hand them over to his kin so their maker could populate the Hells and consume the readied ones.Relocate.
Again, and again, and again.
Saer found a traveler’s inn with an empty room.He paid the sum required—currency stolen or won from prior conquests—and retired to his modest lodgings, which consisted of a too-short bed, a desk and chair, and a drafty fireplace.Dust tickled his nostrils, mixed with the scent of stale linen.Every inch of the tiny room lay visible with one, quick glance.
He’d stayed in worse.
The door shut behind him as he entered and untied his cloak.
“Can you hear me?”
Saer wheeled around, dropping to a defensive stance, arms up to strike or block.
No one behind him.Just the closed door.
The voice hadsurelycome from behind him.
Did he imagine it?
“That answers that question.”Somehow the voice sounded both tired and relieved.
Saer startled again, then snarled, eyes darting around the room.He shifted his feet in a cautious rotation.
Nothing.
He’d heard tales and witnessed a handful of humans seeing visions, hearing specters.Had he spent so long amongst humanity that his mind adopted some of their hallucinatory tendencies?
But as Saer fought to calm the uptick of his heart, he realized he knew that voice.The language, one of the first he’d ever learned.
It can’t be.
He shook his head and scanned the meager space once more.“Show yourself.”
“I’m not sure I know how, anymore.”
Attention darting towards the spot the voice came from, Saer approached it.“No more games, Little Ghost.”
The voice huffed.“Games.”
Saer extended a hand until his fingers contacted an essence, then gripped.The spirit yelped, but vacillated into view, blurry at first.Edges clarified the longer he held on—until the spirit of Ruki stood in front of him, held at arm’s length.
Suspecting the presence proved another thing entirely from actually seeing the soul.Saer froze, staring into the glimmering eyes of the young boy he’d betrayed years upon years prior.Another human lifetime passed since he’d set foot in Chief Asheda’s village.The memories punched him in the gut.
“How…” Saer blinked and shook his head.“How are you still here?”
Ruki’s soul deflated, something between shock and trepidation lining its expression.“No one else can hear me.”
