Chapter 62
After drawing out a ritual circle on a piece of cloth and giving it to Sophie, Zeth walked her back to their house, taking a prepared Hellfire Ritual along with him to act as a weapon just in case he needed to defend her from any monsters. But none came, so after taking her home, he headed back to base.
He did everything he could to disguise the appearance of the ritual circle on the cloth, drawing out an extremely small one and then smudging the rest of it with dirt and anything else he could find to try and make the circle itself blend in, so hopefully anyone who wasn’t actively looking for it wouldn’t notice. Even if they caught a glimpse, it’d really just look like a piece of trash.
Zeth had sent Astrys deeper into the base before taking Sophie out so that she wouldn’t be in range of the demon’s fear aura as she went back up the stairs leading out, so once he returned, he went to find her.
After looking through a few rooms, he ended up spotting her sitting alone in a blank room, staring at the wall with an inscrutable look on her face, like she was deep in thought about something. Her aura of fear had, of course, taken effect on him, so his first thought was automatically that she was secretly plotting against him and waiting to slaughter his whole family, but he pushed that assumption aside and entered the room.
“Hey,” he said. “She’s gone now.”
She shot her head over to Zeth, apparently not having noticed him enter. “Ah.”
Zeth stared at her. “...You gonna come out of here and come up to the main room?”
“If you would like me to, yes.”
She stood and began walking with him as he left the room at the back of the base and moved to the larger room set up at the front, where the entryway led into. The whole time, she was strangely silent, walking ahead with her head fixed forward.