by Joe Jackson
She half-expected Erik to get defensive, but he said nothing as he held her gaze steadily. Finally, he glanced at her tags once more. “I guess I owe you an apology,” he said quietly, but he shook his head. “Why didn’t they tell me you’re the Karian Vanador? Why keep it a secret?”
“It wasn’t kept a secret, Erik. They wanted to see what your reaction would be, and I just don’t like the attention or the prying that comes with people knowing who I am…or was,” Kari explained. She was amazed at how well she was keeping her emotions in check. “Like you said, my career gets studied by recruits at the Academy. Everyone in Jir’tana’s brigade knew who I was. And whenever someone knows who I am, they expect me to start telling them all about my life as if we’re friends. Like you said, you know? ‘Oh wow, you killed an erestram? How did you do it? What’s your secret?’”
Erik nodded and Kari sighed, tightening her mouth into a line. “The Order didn’t tell you clearly because they didn’t want you to just follow me, and they didn’t want you to know you were being watched. I really shouldn’t even be telling you this. I don’t know why they kept promoting you if they don’t trust in your abilities, but that’s not for me to say. Whatever the case, I’m here to help you, and you can depend on me to do exactly that.”
Erik grunted a laugh. “That’d be the one thing I don’t doubt at this point. This is all still very hard to believe, but...” he said, but then he cocked his head. “Does Grakin know? Gods, am I the only one who didn’t?”
“Grakin, Eryn, and Sonja know; I’m not sure if everyone else knew. I don’t like letting people into my life, Erik, but there’s something about Grakin,” she said. She made an effort to hold his powerful gaze steadily. “I love him, Erik, and he loves me. I’m not using him, and our relationship isn’t just ‘a matter of convenience,’ as Jori-an put it. He also knows a lot more about me than the rest of you do, especially after…after what happened in Flora.”
Kari’s heart skipped a beat; she still wasn’t ready to share that, not with Erik, and not here. She shook her head and began to head off into the forest, and Erik jumped to his feet and fell into step beside her. He remained quiet for a few minutes, studying her, but Kari didn’t look at him. “What did happen in Flora?” he asked softly, which was unusual for him. “Nobody wanted to pry into your affairs after that happened, but…I won’t lie, Kari. I need to know if you’re going to be all right to hunt this demon. That can’t happen out here; I need you.”
“I’ll explain some time, but not now,” she said. “It won’t happen again, though: it was something about the city, and I’ve been fine since we left there.”
Erik accepted her explanation and touched her shoulder lightly, and Kari finally managed something close to a smile. He smiled in return, squeezed her shoulder comfortingly, and said, “I’m really sorry. I hope you can forgive me for being such an ass. I just...”
Kari sighed and looked ahead once more. “You’re a half-demon,” she said. “And I’m smart enough to know that has an effect on how easily you trust people.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” he said, though his tone was not overly defensive.
“Doesn’t it?” she asked as she looked higher up into the trees. “People treat your kind with mistrust or even outright hatred, and it makes you just as hesitant to trust them. But you’re a half-guardian, so you’ve got the same protective nature as your, well, grandfathers I guess. I’m no expert in psychology – I couldn’t spell the word if you asked – but I figure mistrust and over-protectiveness makes for a very strange combination of emotions for you to sort through.”
Erik chuckled. “I guess that’s fairly accurate,” he admitted.
“You’re very protective of your siblings, and I admire that,” she continued. “And I guess it must be weird for some woman you think is either crazy or an impostor to take an interest in one of the quietest of your brothers.”
“Exactly. I know you think I was jealous,” he said, and he shrugged. “I guess I am, to some extent. More than that, I was just afraid of Grakin getting hurt. He’s quiet and shy enough as it is, and if someone were to hurt him…”
“I understand,” she said. “I tend to be the same way. It was hard for me to let him in. It’d been years since I let someone into my heart.”
Erik stopped, so Kari paused as well, and the two faced each other squarely with the air of the rainforest an uninterrupted cacophony of sound about them. “We got off to a bad start,” he said and held his hand out to her. “I’m Erik Tesconis, and I understand you and I are going to be working together.”
Kari chuckled lightly but shook his hand. “Karian Vanador, Shield of the Heavens, by Zalkar’s grace,” she said formally. It struck her as odd that he turned his attitude around as quickly as Typhonix had, but she hoped it was genuine and would hold. Kari took her canteen and sipped carefully from it, and then she reached up and wiped the sweat from her brow. “We need to find water. At the rate I’m sweating, this canteen isn’t going to get me very far through the jungle. As far as I can tell, it won’t be long before the next rainfall, but we should find another source just in case. I figure there should be some creeper vines that store water, but I’m not sure if they’ll be the same type as I used to find on Terrassia.”
Erik nodded and checked his compass before leading them in the right direction. All around them they could hear the chirping, clicking, and chattering of life, though they saw nothing at ground level. Higher up in the trees they could hear the movement of creatures both large and small, and rarely they were able to catch a glimpse of shadow as it sped through the canopy. The day passed uneventfully. They failed to find a source of water, and like the previous night, they set up a camp nestled in the roots of a massive tree.
They pushed through for another two days with the heat continuing to weigh down upon them. Kari continued to sweat and Erik gave her his own canteen. He could go much longer without food or water thanks to his half-guardian heritage, and he was insistent that she take his drink and not endanger herself. As she expected, Kari was able to get water during a heavy rainfall on the third day, but she wasn’t sure how often they could depend on rain, so she suggested they stay alert while they traveled. Kari began to suspect there was a grade to the land that was too slight for them to detect, as they continued to have no luck finding rivers or streams. Erik was amazed that such a lush landscape could be so lacking in running water, but Kari explained that they were likely to find some deep rivers once they reached the lower portions of the rainforest. Instead, Kari described some of the water-storing plants she was familiar with.
Their search continued into the fourth day. When they prepared to stop for a short meal around what they assumed was midday, Kari noted that the forest had become very quiet. She looked around suspiciously and Erik finally noticed as well. They both drew their blades and crouched down defensively near a tree, and Kari watched the jungle around them intently. With the unnerving silence growing thick around them, Kari worked to keep her breathing slow and steady. She centered her mind within herself and prepared for battle. Her nerves ached as every fiber of her being bristled with the sweet release of adrenaline. When she finally spotted the culprit, she burst into action. She dashed toward a large trunk directly ahead of her, and Erik followed close behind. They circled the tree and found a single corlyps, and Kari motioned for Erik to engage it while she looked for its companions. The corlyps was a fearsome fighter but was generally a cowardly creature, and they rarely traveled – let alone attacked – on their own.
The corlyps appeared somewhat like a red-skinned rir, though their crowns were covered with small black horns rather than hair, and they had heavy, black leathery wings. They were muscular, with terrible claws and fangs, and were intelligent enough to wear armor, though they preferred their natural weapons to man-made ones. The demon hissed menacingly and hopped around as it circled Erik and looked for an opening to attack. “Watch your back, Erik,” Kari called, and she moved awa
y from her partner around another tree, following a set of tracks that could have belonged to the demon they had already engaged.
“Watch your own,” he yelled back.
Kari followed the tracks around the wide trunk before her, and she kept her blades up defensively to prevent being pounced upon. Sure enough she found two more corlypsi on the far side of the tree, apparently hoping to ambush her and Erik while they engaged the first serilian demon. Kari sidestepped to square up with the two demons, who hissed at her and split apart to try to flank her. “Two more,” Kari called. She could hear a pained grunt from around the tree, and she hoped Erik didn’t get blindsided by even more of them.
Kari stepped between the demons, and they were not expecting such a foolish move. She turned and cut three times at the one on her left before she spun and repeated the combination at the other. Each hopped away from her short flurries, and Kari dashed to her right to confront one and square herself up to the other. The corlyps she engaged hissed menacingly but kept its distance. The corlypsi were cowards, but they were clever and vicious, and Kari knew that they wouldn’t engage her solo without weapons of their own. When fighting with tooth and claw, the demons relied on pack tactics like hyenas or wolves. Kari knew that when their counterstrike came, it would come from behind her.
Kari swung high and then low with her scimitars and sidestepped again, and she turned to confront the other corlyps. It backed away a couple of steps as she bore down upon it, but its attention was in the wrong place: Erik came from around the tree and ran the creature through from behind. His longsword came out neatly between the creature’s ribs and the wind came out of it in a rush as its lung was pierced. Sensing the coming attack, Kari turned and hit the corlyps approaching from behind her with a crouching swing, slicing open its thigh. The creature stumbled in pain and Kari turned to the side, straightened out fully, and relieved the foul creature of its head.
Erik kicked the dying corlyps impaled upon his sword in the back and turned around as though expecting further trouble. The third demon, the one Erik had initially engaged, came around the tree but stopped short when it beheld its slain companions. It hissed and faked a threatening step forward, but then it jumped and clawed its way slightly up a tree trunk before it took wing and flew off into the rainforest.
Kari watched to make sure the demon hadn’t simply circled to attack from another angle. Once satisfied that they were safe for the moment, she decapitated the one Erik had impaled. Kari saw that Erik’s armor was torn on the back of his left arm, and the steel armor was coated in his black blood. Erik removed his left vambrace so Kari could inspect the wound. The demon had caught him solidly and the lacerations were fairly deep, so Kari channeled a bit of her deity’s power to stanch the bleeding. While the healing magic she had access to as a demonhunter wasn’t strong, it was useful for stanching bleeds so that the wounded would have time to seek proper healing. She dug through her pack for a minute before she found some clean bandages. She wrapped Erik’s wounds as well as she was able and helped him replace his vambrace, damaged as it was.
“Is that going to be all right?” she asked. She wasn’t sure where they’d have to go if he needed the services of a proper healer, but Erik picked up his scimitar and swung it around a couple of times with a grimace.
“I think so,” he said, though it was clear he was trying to mask the pain. “It stings and it burns, but I can still move my arm well enough. We heal fast; I’ll be fine in a couple of days.”
Kari trusted in his assessment and patted his armored shoulder. “Thanks for the help,” she said. “Corlypsi can be a pain when you’re fighting more than one.”
“You seemed to handle yourself just fine before I came,” he said, eyeing her. She could see he was more than satisfied with her combat abilities, even moreso than he’d been on the ship. “If you hadn’t held its attention, I’d have been stuck between two of them and, well, you can see how that would’ve ended. You remind me of Aeligos in a fight: he’s not a swordsman like you, but he’s a hell of a tactician, and always seems to be in the right place at the right time.”
Kari smiled at the genuine compliment and studied the forest around them for several minutes, watching for the slightest sign that the last corlyps had returned or that anything else might have been attracted by the sounds of battle. She was fairly certain the demon would not attempt a second strike: corlypsi were easily demoralized and unlikely to try again unless they had an advantage of numbers. Unless the rainforest was crawling with demons – which she doubted – it seemed safe to assume that they would not encounter the creature again. Once the nearby birds and insects started up their cacophonous chatter again, she relaxed.
Kari turned her attention to the corpses of the dead corlypsi and grimaced at the prospect of leaving them exposed to rot under the elements. Demon flesh was foul and their blood was poisonous, so it wouldn’t benefit the local wildlife for them to be left as they were. On the other hand, she and Erik didn’t have the luxury of time, energy, or water to waste the precious hours it would take to bury the dead. Burning them was out of the question for the same reasons, not even taking the danger of forest fire into account.
“Guess we leave these,” Kari said as she slumped the corpses against the base of a tree, and Erik agreed.
Silently, the two put some distance between themselves and the site of the battle and then sat down to have their lunch. Kari ate her trail rations sparingly and took only a few sips of her dwindling water supply. Erik didn’t want to eat at all, but Kari pushed him to so that his wounds would heal faster. He couldn’t argue with her logic, but he picked lightly at his own rations. He kept looking at Kari while they ate, and she wondered what he was thinking. She figured he was probably still embarrassed by their conversation from a few days before, perhaps especially after being in a battle with her.
“So you really received that armor as a gift from a friend?” he asked, clearly intrigued. Like Aaron in Barcon, Erik could hardly believe that anyone had given away such a valuable set of armor. Paluric armor was made of an odd metallic substance that didn’t behave like a metal: it was nearly impervious to heat and therefore rumored to only be workable by a smith who had access to dragon fire or hellfire. It required similarly massive heat just to mine it, since it turned aside metal and magic alike. Not surprisingly, armor, weapons, and other tools made from the metal were exceedingly rare, and therefore worth a fortune.
“Are we back to this again?” Kari asked irritably, but she chuckled when Erik started to stammer an apology.. “You probably wouldn’t believe the tale if I told it to you.”
He eased up when he realized she was teasing. “I’m talking to a woman returned from the dead,” he said with a smirk. “Let’s see how much more unbelievable your story can be.”
“Ever heard of Ashurinax the Black?” she asked. Erik shook his head negatively. Kari rocked back slightly with a sigh, and she looked off into the past rather than around them. “I guess I have to start from the beginning. You know I was born and raised in Flora, eventually moved to Solaris, and then went to the Demonhunter Academy. After I finished my training, I asked to be assigned to duty on Terrassia and my request was granted. I moved around a lot, accepting and carrying out orders whenever I came across them, and finding my own as I wandered between the four kingdoms.”
“Four kingdoms?” Erik prompted.
“Yes, Terrassia used to be divided among four kingdoms, though I think that’s changed since Arku’s invasion in the later years of the Apocalypse. There were the fures-rir kingdom of Tenari in the north; the humans of Dira Ch’Tori and its territories in the northeast; the elves of Laeranore in the east; and the shakna-rir based in Aurun Ch’Gurra in the south and west.”
“I spent most of my time moving between Laeranore and Aurun Ch’Gurra, traveling with…,” she started, but she paused as she considered he would probably be overwhelmed if she told him she’d traveled with Saint Bakhor. “Traveling with some friends that
knew following me would usually lead to some type of adventure. They weren’t welcome in the elven lands, though: the elves don’t like outsiders, and I only gained their trust by rooting out a nest of demons that were using the elves’ territorial nature to keep hidden. Anyway, outsiders avoid setting foot in Laeranore, but the place is far from empty and elves aren’t the only thing that inhabits the forest.”
Kari finished her lunch and stowed her things in her pack once more. She beckoned for Erik to follow and they set out to the north again. “Back in the summer of seventy-three – erm, twenty-eight seventy-three, that is – I came across a cave with a nasty stench coming out of it. It smelled like rotting demon corpses.”
“So naturally, you decided to investigate what was killing demons,” Erik said. “With absolutely no concern for your own well-being, I’m sure.”
Kari shrugged. “You’d be surprised how brave being diagnosed with a terminal illness makes you,” she said.
Erik did a double-take. “Terminal what?”
Kari glanced at him. “Oh, I thought you’d know. I…died of Dracon’s Bane when I was twenty-seven. Never knew I had it until I graduated from the Academy. Up til then, I could never figure out why I was always sick.”
Erik considered her, amazement plainly written on his face, and Kari wasn’t sure just what about her surprised him the most. “You didn’t find out until you were…?” he prompted.
