“Well, no, but I’m curious.” He dropped the stack of withering books onto the circular table, dust billowing around them. Grabbing a chair, he pulled it in front of her, flipped it around so that the back of the chair faced her, and sat straddling it, leaning his forearms upon the chair's back rail. A mischievous smile spread across his face. “A seemingly innocent, quiet girl from a small town that has seen nothing of the world around her is obsessed with the thought of demons. It’s quite odd. So, I ask again. Why are you so interested in demons?”
She narrowed her gaze at him, crossing her arms over her chest and trying not to roll her eyes. How cocky and frustrating this man was. He knew nothing of her. She had seen things; she had seen more things than he could even imagine. “Fine. If you must know, I do know of the legend of the White Demon, and I’m intrigued to find out if there are more demons in this world. I’m curious whether any of them resemble the White Demon from our legend.”
His face held no emotion, no acknowledgement of what she just said. She had no idea what he was thinking. “So, it’s called the White Demon?” he questioned, cupping his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Why is it called that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Now, I’ve answered your question, it's your turn to answer mine.”
He chuckled again and she cursed her body's response at the reverberations she could feel through the floorboards. Why could she always feel the depths of his voice vibrating through the ground? It was driving her mad, even worse she was getting used to the feeling, almost welcoming it each time he spoke.
“Well as it happens, I keep a log.” He reached into the gray cloth bag he had been carrying with him and extracted a small leather journal tied around with sting. “You’re welcome to look through it.”
She snatched it from his hand like a greedy child offered a treat.
“Gods, you are much too excited about demons. Trust me, you never want to encounter one of them.” He shook his head and got up, moving his chair back to the table in the center of the room and began looking through the texts he had discarded there.
Oriana left the book she had been reading discarded beside her and opened Garren’s journal, rifling through the pages, eagerly reading his tightly scrawled descriptions of the demons he had encountered over the years.
Oriana broke the companionable silence that had settled between them with a sudden urge to tell him a piece of ancient lore. “Do you know where the word demon originated?” It had been ages since she’d been able to talk of such things with anyone. Aside from Haldis, she’d had little interaction with anyone these past few decades. She would go into the town for work, for food, for a small sense of company, but even that was fleeting. She had worked in every establishment possible throughout the centuries, purely for human companionship. The little fact of her not aging would have been a cause for concern in the town so her persona had constantly changed. She had taken up new work and made new friendships, however short-lived. Once the time came, she would simply disappear, emerging again as a whole new person and weaving a new story through the framework of the town just as she had before.
“No, I’m not sure I do. Seems like something a demon hunter should probably know though,” he chuckled softly, turning his full attention to her. He closed the book he was reading, keeping one finger wedged between its brittle, crumbling pages to hold his place.
“It came before the legend of the White Demon. Centuries before, in fact, when a nameless man with hair of snow and eyes that changed color with his mood wandered the land. He would torture and mutilate people just for fun, moving from town to town. A being of pure evil thought to have sprung forth from the depths of the underworld, born in its fiery pits. The people thought the Gods had sent him to punish them for worshiping false Gods, made up Gods of their own making. They named the man De meaning evil in the old language and mon meaning spirit. Eventually the people began to worship the Gods of old, and the Demon just vanished.” Despite telling it, she hated the story, hated anything that had to do with the Gods and their thirst for power and worship. Why would beings of unlimited power seek the praise and worship of mortal beings they created themselves? It made no sense to her.
“Hmm,” Garren mumbled, leaning against the back of his chair. The wooden seat looked like it was made for a child with him sitting in it. “Well, I can agree that all demons are evil. I’ve not met one yet that hasn’t greeted me with murder in its eyes.”
She hmphed at that, diving back into Garren’s journal of monsters. What he had described in its pages had her skin crawling and sent blood rushing to her head, feeling dizzy as she scanned through them. Body like that of a human, extra set of arms, a single eye in the center of its head, and blood of silver. A Murrir. He had even sketched a small rendering of it on the bottom of the page alongside the date he’d faced it. She read the next: tail of a scorpion, body of a horse, serpent’s tongue, fur red as a ripe tomato, blood of black. “Skorfur,” she breathed.
“What was that?” Garren asked, his attention shifting to her, silver eyes shining like a stalking nighttime creature in the dim lamplight.
“Oh, no it's nothing…just these demons, they don’t seem real.” In that they shouldn’t even be here, she thought. They were in the wrong world; none of these creatures belonged in Svakland. It could only mean one thing.
She hunched in her seat, swallowing the hard lump that had formed in her throat, blood icing over in her veins.
“They are quite real. My imagination could not possibly come up with those creatures of death on its own.” He shivered slightly at the thought, but then gave her a small smile that made her heart skip a beat.
“How many demons have you faced?” she inquired.
“Forty-seven.”
“And did you best them all?” her eyes moved from the page to his face for a glimpse of his reaction to the question.
“Yes,” his features hardened slightly, and she knew that look of pain, like a gaping wound that still spilt blood no matter how much time passed.
Oriana flipped through a few more pages, reading the descriptions there and naming each of them in her head. She needed to know the date of the first demon he faced and the exact year they began appearing.
Oriana examined each page thoroughly, each demon's description, their roughly drawn renderings, and the dates Garren had marked below them until she found her answer. The first encounter had been during the tenth month in the year seventeen forty-nine, twenty-five years prior.
She slammed the journal shut. This was bad, very bad. How Garren had bested all of them, she couldn’t comprehend. Especially the Phalik: a cunning creature with extreme hypnotic power able to lure all into its grasp. An exceptionally powerful creature.
She studied his face, eyes catching on the long, jagged scar that ran down it.
“Which of these demons gave you that scar?” she questioned. Her bet would be on the Phalik.
His low chuckle rumbled through the room. “Surprisingly, this wasn’t from a demon. I was born with it. My mother said I’ve always had it, ever since I was a babe.”
Oriana hid her confusion from him. Sure, there were many different marks and deformities that could happen when a child developed in its mother’s womb, but that scar had come from something else. It was the sort of mark that only came from forcefully cutting open the flesh.
“Do you have any other scars?” she asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
