“The Demon King is making more moves as of late,” Wren stated, eyeing her closely.
Her back straightened.
Emerie had only learned of him the previous day when she’d been forced to go through text after text relating to all the information they’d obtained. Under Wren’s watchful eye and eagerness to answer any and all questions Emerie had, she’d read about him.
A tall dark-skinned man, who had red eyes that sometimes appeared brown. Long white hair, black backwards spiralling horns, pointed ears, claws and fangs. The sketches of him had all been different, some depicting him as handsome, others gnarly.
It’s why Emerie hadn’t batted an eye when the Duskwalker mentioned him.
New information was being forced down her throat with the aim of widening her perspective. There was a mountain of books she still needed to read, but she’d been given the permission to read such sensitive information because she was Wren’s underling.
“We don’t fully know what he is, as the Demons give us different answers. All we know is that he is at the centre of the Demon scourge, and that he is intelligent. That he has magic, power, and strength. Why would the Duskwalker ask for our aid, rather than pledge allegiance to him? It just sounds too suspicious to me. And why now? It’s been hundreds of years – why only seek our aid now? These are the questions you need to ask yourself, Emerie, before you come into my office, demanding I stop what I’m doing.”
She remained silent, unable to find a suitable response. Instead, she just inspected Wren’s face, her lips tight and her right hand refusing to unclench.
“You’re starting to understand, aren’t you? You can see why I’m doing this.” There was humour in Wren’s eyes, even if it didn’t reach the rest of her face. “If I free you from solitary, I trust you will keep what you learn to yourself. Yes?”
“I would never be so stupid as to leak information,” Emerie bit out. “That’s how I find my head on a spike above the main gates.”
“Exactly,” Wren confirmed, that humour finally touching her features to give her an ugly sneer. “Now, let’s continue your training.”
She was ushered to sit at a different table within Wren’s office, where there was already a pile of leather-bound books waiting for her.
Emerie usually enjoyed reading, but she couldn’t think of anything worse right now.
Her workload was so daunting, the stack felt bigger than mount Zagros itself.
Beneath her Demonslayer face coverings, Emerie paled.
She watched as they dragged out the corpse of the doctor who had been the one wielding the scalpel against the Duskwalker for the last few days. The beast was rattling his chains as he fought against them, having just enough freedom to thrust his head one way and then the next.
He snapped his long beak, and even attempted to peck at one of the Elders trying to wrangle rope around it in order to secure it.
Honestly, the death of the doctor could have been prevented had they not wanted to go poking around inside his mouth.
One of the Elders also wouldn’t have lost their fingers in the process. They’d tried to help fight off the creature as he pecked and bit at the doctor’s neck, chest, and face, and accidentally put their hand in danger’s way.
Part of Emerie believed the doctor deserved it, the other half of her rebelled against the death of a human. And just how many had this one Duskwalker killed?
“Release me!” the Duskwalker roared, wriggling with all his might for freedom. “Release me!”
Within seconds, his beak was tied shut again, and she doubted they’d risk releasing it again.
He’s just defending himself, she thought, eyeing the human blood that streaked right next to her and out the door. If he’d been telling the truth about why he came here… then he was just defending himself outside the gates too.
She didn’t know if it was true.
Every second of every day, Wren’s voice whispered in the back of her mind. Emerie couldn’t help agreeing with much of it; a lot of it was reasonable, even if it was undeniably sick and twisted.
“See?” Wren snorted as she glanced back at Emerie, who was hiding her inner panic with a casual expression. “When given the chance, he’ll kill.”
The forceps the doctor had been using to hold his tongue lay on the ground and reflected the flickering firelight, as did the scalpel he’d been intending to use. Where, Emerie wasn’t sure.
She couldn’t deny the truth of it, not when it had happened right before her. She squinted. But I’ve bitten the fingers of a bandit when he tried to remove my tongue.
Then she’d managed to get to freedom and slice her attacker’s throat.
How was it any different? It fucking wasn’t.
They cranked the wheels on either side of the Duskwalker to angle the table forward and force him to kneel again.
“I’m guessing I’m on cleanup duty?” Emerie sneered, causing humour to light up in Wren’s usually cold expression.
“I was going to give you a break, but with that tone? Absolutely.”
Emerie didn’t even move out of the way as they exited, forcing them to barge into her shoulder. Then she waited for them to give her cleaning tools as the Duskwalker continued to roar.
He was uninjured – they hadn’t managed to hurt him yet – but he wasn’t calming. He seems enraged. She eyed the ground. Is it because of the blood?
Funnily enough, she found it easier to clean up the blood of the guildmembers. Perhaps it was because they’d gotten what they deserved.
She didn’t know what it was, but she was becoming desensitized to their deaths, and more vulnerable to him. Yet Wren’s constant barrage of opinions just spun her mind into a confused ache.
What was right and wrong? Good and bad? Evil and righteous? Emerie was tired of being in limbo.
She was heart-sick from it. Unable to eat, unable to sleep. It festered within, causing her skin to itch until she threatened to break it apart. She was covered in small rashes underneath her uniform.
She would eventually need to pick a side and wholly accept what they did.
It barely took any time at all for her to clean up the blood from the room, and she was stupid enough to approach him to wipe the worst of it from his thrashing face – the tip of his beak. She spooked quickly and backed up. Not long after she asked for a new bucket of water – an excuse to remain with the Duskwalker – he eventually calmed, albeit very gradually.
Or, rather, when the remaining bits of blood on him dried.
He gave wild huffs through his nose holes, his chest rising and falling in rapid succession. She knew his red orbs were upon her, and she didn’t find them as hollow and soulless as she once did.
“You–”
“Leave me alone!” he yelled, jerking and causing the sound of bones to rattle from him, as well as the chink of his chains.
“They will just use a different doctor,” she told him.
“Then I will destroy that one too,” he rumbled, his words unnerving.
Her skin rose in goosebumps.
“Did it feel good to kill him?”
She didn’t know why she asked him. Maybe she wanted a reason to hate him, to make her okay with all this happening.
“Yes,” he snarled.