Land of Demons

3

Gently lifting the man’s head, she pinched his nose and poured the medicine into his mouth.

A second later, the wounded man gulped it all down instinctively. He jerked and then stilled. His breathing gradually steadied, and the wound on his chest began to disappear. His bones creaked as they popped back into place, and the pained whistling turned into steady breathing.

“Crisis averted,” Alea wiped the sweat from her forehead.

“Do you really think it-”

A low growl interrupted Derek. The tigress, after glaring at the young man, turned back to Alea.

“Seems like it does understand us,” Derek whispered, his face suddenly pale.

“We have to take him to Fort Boltoy,” Alea continued, “Otherwise, I’m afraid he’ll die from the injuries that have been inflicted on his energy body. I can maintain his meridians and nodes for some time, but he needs more help than I can give him.”

The trio stared at the tigress. She lay on the ground for a while, and then, rising, she growled and covered the thirty feet that separated her from the carriage in a single bound. The horses reared and neighed at first, startled by the presence of such a powerful predator. The tigress snarled and the horses froze. Seemingly bound by crippling terror, they decided that the only way to survive was to submit.

“I wonder if we’re any different from them…” Derek murmured.

Nobody answered him. They made a stretcher out of their cloaks and sticks they found nearby, then placed the man on it.

“Why is he so heavy?” Derek whined, causing the girls to roll their eyes again.

The wounded man was rather tall, but he didn’t seem to have a lot of muscle. He was lean like most swordsmen, but he had no sword, no armor, no insignia or recognizable marks, only a ring on his finger and some rags that served as his clothes.

Passing by the tigress, the trio laid the man down on the wide sofa inside the carriage. Alea covered him with a blanket, put a rolled-up raincoat under his head, and then moved to close the door.

“Oh crap!” The trio shouted in unison.

They watched as the tigress kicked off with her hind legs and leapt into the air. Irma even closed her eyes. When she opened them, she found herself not on the threshold of her forefathers’ home, but still sitting opposite the injured man. None of them had been mauled by the Ancient Beast. Actually, the beast appeared to be gone. Instead, a white cub was curled up on the stranger’s chest and snoring peacefully.

“Oh, gods help us!” Derek said wearily.

   

Derek, Alea, and Irma, the disciples of the ‘Red Mule’ school, had been traveling with the wounded stranger for two days now. He was a quiet and pleasant companion. He didn’t ask rhetorical questions like Derek did, didn’t admire the monotonous views like Irma, and didn’t philosophize like Alea. He just slept, sometimes groaning in pain. Whenever he did that, Alea, welcoming the chance to stop arguing with Derek and Irma for a bit, would treat him. She kept him alive, not allowing his severed meridians to stay without energy for long, lest he end up going to his forefathers before nightfall.

“So… You think,” Derek drawled, casting yet another curious glance at the injured man, “that he fell from somewhere?”

“Yep. He fell from somewhere high up in the sky, and then, apparently, rolled down a rocky slope.”

“Are you sure that’s even possible? A Heaven Soldier wouldn’t have survived that, even if they had an Earth level Technique for Strengthening the Body.”

“Perhaps someone tried to turn him into a sack of flour, so they tossed him into a giant mill,” Alea teased.

“I’m serious!” Derek snapped, angry that she wasn’t taking him seriously.

“And I seriously don’t understand why you care so much about how this man ended up in this situation!”

While those two were arguing, Irma was playing with the cub. She seemed to have forgotten that, just recently, the Ancient Beast had made her blood run cold with terror. Now she was watching the cub trying to catch the sunbeams.

“He could be a Darnassian spy.”

“Of course!” Alea moved her hand away from the injured man’s arm. He began to breathe more evenly. “It’s common knowledge that all Darnassian spies have an Ancient Beast as their companion, are always dressed in rags, and travel without any weapons or armor on them.”

Derek gritted his teeth, but he let the insult go. Commoners like Alea and Irma normally had no right to offend a noble like himself, but their difference in social status was offset by the fact that they were all disciples of the inner circle, and that after graduation, both Alea and Irma would receive the same noble title that his father had now. On top of that, the two of them were just as strong as he was.

“His ring,” Derek almost growled.

Alea glanced at the simple signet ring on the injured man’s right index finger.

“It might just be a family heirloom,” she shrugged dismissively.

“I don’t know why you’re so determined to believe that he’s a good guy.” Derek’s eyes shone with malice. “That ring is a spatial artifact.”

“What makes you say that?”

“My father and I went to see our Duke when I was a child. One of the Viscounts there boasted about buying a similar ring. I memorized its energy structure. This ring has a similar structure, only…”

Alea looked interested now. In their Duchy, which was neither rich nor poor, only the Duke and his children, the Viscounts, could afford simple spatial artifacts. It was hard to imagine just how much such a ring could cost, but she was certain that, for that much coin, a person could buy the entire Barony and the ‘Red Mule’ school as well.