Chapter 329
Tirnicia had vested interest in treating us well now that I promised to help her. She fixed up a big meal in the morning, made sure our stomachs were filled, and saw to it that dark elves weren't giving Erma a hard time. Not that her intervention was needed for that last part. After the other day's demon attack, many of the Oakfall dark elves held her in moderate respect and gratitude. Enough in fact to share plenty of drinks with her that she was suffering the effects in the morning.
"Guugh… My head… is pounding… Wine is meant to be taken in moderation and during occasions. Not… for entire bottles to be drunken… in a single sitting." Erma pressed a towel full of ice to her head.
"I'm surprised how easily you fall to peer pressure. You had every opportunity to say 'no' and just leave," I teased her.
"I didn't want to be rude." She sulked.
Peer pressure affected the people of Elza in much the same way as Earth, huh.
After lunch, we went outside the inn where Tirnicia and her two scouts were waiting. Everyone was geared up. Erma bought some potions for her headache from the local alchemist atelier.
"S-Saeko, I think we have a problem!" Kana was holding onto Nyra's hand, but she was the one dragging him out of the inn, his heels digging into the ground.
"Go with! Go with!" Nyra complained.
"You can't. It's going to be dangerous out there. Stay here with Kana and Shayle. They'll keep you company until we get back. If you promise to be a good girl, we can go buy some treats for you later." I promised.
"Mmrrggh…" The demon girl pouted.
Fortunately, Nyra was obedient. Every fiber in her body looked like she wanted to come with us though.
"Hopefully, we can placate her until you all return. Queen Elendir, go with the Everlight's guidance." Shayle bowed.
We set out into the wilderness past the brook, following the fresh demon tracks left behind after yesterday's attack. The dark elven scouts went ahead of us. They would report back any worthwhile sightings. Our goal wasn't to eliminate the demon threat, but to ascertain if someone was leading them, and if yes, to find out who.
The forests here were completely unlike Emerald Dardaria. Magic was teeming from every grain of soil and every leaf on a plant. Normally, I needed to have sex to obtain sexual energy which transforms into mana for me to cast spells. Out here, a very gentle flow entered my body. Not enough to stave off the hunger though.
"It's not too late to turn back, Elendir. I'd be much more at ease if you did." Tirnicia slowed down to our pace, face awash with worry.
"You won't get rid of me that easily. Fear not. Saeko, Mio, and Erma are more than capable. And you also know my magic is nothing to scoff at." Elendir smiled.
"If anything goes terribly wrong, Shayle gave us the mirror artifact to return to Oakfall at a moment's notice." I showed them the prized magic item.
"I dunno, man. Aside from the very big baddies, I feel like we can take on almost anything with this group." Mio shrugged.
Two succubi, a dark elf mage, a former dark elf general, and a light elf whose whole career was killing demons… While we were pretty stacked, in more ways than one, no one was sure what was waiting out there. It was a win in my book if we found nothing and returned to Oakfall safely.
"Say someone really is leading the demon horde. Does anyone know who might fit the bill? Erma, you can answer, too, since you probably had intelligence on the Demon King's army," I said.
Erma shook her head.
"That's a hard question to answer. His armies were vast and leadership wasn't always clear cut like the light elves' chain of command." Elendir frowned.
"I don't even know the name of every succubus at my nest." Mio threw her hands up.
"In the final stages of the war," Tirnicia began in thought, "the Demon King was getting backed into a corner, so he recalled everyone back to mount a counterattack. As you can imagine, not all answered his summons. It was a losing war, after all. I imagine those who ignored him were the smarter ones."
Over the course of the journey, they listed off names that meant nothing to me. I wasn't present for their war. That was history by the time I learned about it. We ran into some stray demons and killed them easily.
Every now and then, the scouts returned to give us an update. A larger horde to the east. Some edible mushrooms to forage on the stump of a fallen tree. However, nothing of note and definitely no sightings of a demon leader. At some point, the scouts stopped checking in. We were getting worried.
"I'm getting a bad feeling about this," Mio muttered under her breath.
"Tirnicia, I think we should turn back. The forest has grown eerily quiet when it's normally full of life," Elendir explained.
"I'm not going to abandon my scouts like you did us!" Tirnicia snapped.
Elendir bit back a response, hurt by her words.
"We'll leave once we catch up with them," she added, much to our relief.
"Stop!" Erma put one arm out to keep us from walking any deeper into a meadow clearing. "We've walked into a trap."
"And it's too late for you to turn around!" A gravelly voice bellowed from the other side.
All of us went on guard as a tall demon man emerged from across the clearing. His skin was an ashen gray. He had two sets of horns, one pair that stretched out from the ears and forward and the other curving upwards. Deep red eyes peered out from a battered iron helmet crowned his head. Muscular legs that looked like they could take down a tree with a single kick were digitigrade like a cat's.
Nothing about him indicated he was anything like the other demons we fought. Yet at the same time, he wasn't any inhabitant of Elza I'd seen before. Elendir, Tirnicia, and Mio, however, eyed him with venomous spite.
"Servus, the Houndmaster! I should have known. If anyone could have rounded this many demons under their command, it was you." Elendir glared.
"Servus?" I echoed the name.
"A sly warlord who openly wanted to take the Demon King's place, even during his reign. Why attack Oakfall? We have nothing of value for you to take!" Tirnicia squeezed the handle of her longsword until the knuckles turned white.
"Nothing? On the contrary, there is manpower. Able-bodied dark elves, some capable of advanced magic and others keen enough to outmaneuver the Everlight armies. You elves would never come back to the fold after tasting freedom again. So, I did the one thing we're all familiar with— subjugation through brute strength!" Servus exclaimed.
"This is your end, foul demon. My goddess will reward me for putting a sword through your throat to silence you." Erma leveled her sword at him.
"You came to die instead. If you wanted to kill me, you should have brought more than two succubi!" He snapped his fingers, and the entire forest around us shuddered.
Countless demons surrounded us at once, having somehow snuck up without our notice. They were in the trees, behind shrubs, and more than enough to make a small army. Servus was right. Between me and Mio, we could charm a lot but not all. If a fight were to happen here, I didn't doubt our chances at victory… but not everyone was going to come out alive.
"How did they surround us? Where were the scouts?" Tirnicia growled.
"You mean these two?" Servus beckoned to his horde.
Demons parted ways for two large hounds each holding an injured dark elf in their jaws. They let them fall to the ground. Tirnicia inched forward. She might have gone berserk if the dark elves were dead.
"It appears I hold all the bargaining chips. Shall we work out a bloodless arrangement?" The Houndmaster smirked.
"Queen Saeko," Tirnicia began in a whisper, "on my signal, charm those hounds to bring my scouts here. Open a portal and get the hell out of here. Ready? Now!"
To my surprise, the signal was Tirnicia charging headlong into Servus. I exerted my charm on the hounds to pick up the dark elves. He realized right away and tried to grab them, but Tirnicia didn't give him that chance. She cleaved downwards, forcing him to parry her with his own sword.
"Go, now! Leave me!" Tirnicia shouted.
"What?!" Elendir gasped.
"Get them!" Servus howled and the demons obeyed.
Time slowed down for me. I pulled out the mirror artifact and opened a portal back to Oakfall. Both demon hounds carrying the dark elven scouts raced through. Elendir, shouting for Tirnicia to come back, launched fireballs that incinerated groups of demons into ash, but their numbers were quickly replaced. Mio and Erma had to drag her through.
I caught one last glimpse of Tirnicia before going in after them. Contentedness, peace, and a single nod that conveyed more to me than words could. In the next blink of the eye, I was in front of Oakfall. The portal closed behind me. A few dark elven town guards had already killed the two demon hounds with spears through their eyes.
"Tirnicia? Tirnicia!" Elendir searched desperately if she had somehow teleported with us.
"Damn that demon." Erma grinded her teeth. "That was brave of Tirnicia, but to sacrifice herself for two scouts—"
The dark elven queen grabbed Erma by the collar of her tunic. "What? Are you about to say she should have abandoned them? Tirnicia isn't that kind of person. A light elf wouldn't understand."
"That's not what I… I'm sorry, Elendir. I spoke out of turn." She glanced at the ground.
Elendir was taken aback by the apology and let go, appearing ashamed of herself for firing a low blow.
"What happened?" a guard came running and asked.
"Tirnicia was taken by a demon named Servus, the Houndmaster," I explained since the others couldn't.
"No way… what are we going to do without her?" Whispers broke out like a wildfire from the townsfolk who had overheard.
It became increasingly clear to me how many people relied on Tirnicia, and how much she meant to them.
"Don't lose hope." Elendir peeled her cowl back to reveal herself. "Tirnicia was taken alive. We can still save her. You all know me as Queen Elendir! Rally under me, and we will rescue her together!"
The rousing pep talk didn't have the effect Elendir was hoping for. People didn't regard her warmly or with jubilant cheers. Instead, many whispered and muttered amongst themselves, sounding a lot more defeated about Tirnicia's capture than before.
"I don't understand… Why aren't they listening to me?" Elendir was on the verge of tears, so Mio and I gave her hands a comforting squeeze.
"Tirnicia said it before. You were an absent queen to them for so long, they have no reason to obey," I explained.
"We'll charm them all to help us, how about that?" Mio suggested.
"No… Please, don't. I appreciate your attempts to console me, but charming them will only make us tyrants. I won't force obedience from my own people…" she said, wrenching from our grasps and slinking into town alone with her head hanging.
I shot Mio the stink-eye.
"I'm sorry, alright? That's usually how I cheer people up! But damn. This whole shit went to shit fast. What if we call in some backup? We have the mirror artifact, right?" Mio asked.
"Oakfall is already wary of us, and the last thing we want to do is overload the mirror and risk cracking it again," I reminded her.
"Fuck, that's right." She sulked.
"Hmm," Erma started thinking aloud without realizing it. "Almost all of Oakfall is made up of veterans of the war. They may be injured or handicapped in some way, but the discipline is still there. Elendir has the right idea to rally them into a fighting force. She was just the wrong person to do it. If not Tirnicia, not Elendir, then who…"
Mio and I exchanged glances.
"What about you?" we blurted out at the same time.
"Huh? Me? Oh, I can't possibly… These are dark elves. I'm a light elf. We were quite literally killing each other during the war," Erma explained.
"Sure, but at the end of the day, you're all elves. You're more familiar with each other than we are with you," I said.
She furrowed her brows. "And if they don't listen to me? Even if they do, I know nothing about how they respond to commands or act together. It's like asking me to teach a combat sport when I know nothing about it."
Mio paced back and forth until an idea hatched in her head. Without saying anything to us, she cupped both hands over her mouth.
"Heeeeyy! This light elf over here is calling you chickens!" Mio shouted at the top of her lungs.
Some dark elves had never spun around faster in their lives than that moment, shooting Erma a dirty look.
"What are you doing?!" Erma whispered.
Mio continued even louder, "We're planning to go take on those demons to bring Tirnicia back even if it kills us. But you guys? Just a bunch of pussies, and I know a pussy when I see one because I've eaten plenty! This light elf has bigger balls than you. Guess it makes sense why we lost to them in the war."
"M-Mio, I'm with Erma. Why are you antagonizing them?" I gulped.
More and more dark elves poured from town. The murmur of angry chatter filled the air.
"Come over here and say it to my face!"
"We can fight, and sure as hell don't need a light elf to fight for us!"
"I'll sooner get fucked by an ogre than let a let a light elf show me up!"
Mio's speech riled them up. It was actually working. They were all coming out and spreading the word. The fear that gripped them earlier had seemingly vanished, replaced by a fiery desire to show up their lighter skinned counterpart.
"Also, maybe we learn something about Servus by looking through Nyra's memories?" Mio suggested.
"Can you?" Elendir gasped.
"And traumatize her? No. No way," I said.
"My love, please." The dark elf grabbed my hands. "Tirnicia is out there… We may save her yet."
I wanted to refuse. After all, Nyra was frightened by battle. Mio and I saw it for ourselves in her dreams. She ran and tried to hide, and only fought when forced to. Dredging up memories might inch her closer to being the Demon King again, too.
At the same time, I want to say Tirnicia for everyone's sake, not just Elendir and Oakfall.
"Fine, only on the condition that Nyra is okay with it," I said.
"Sweet! Have fun getting to know your new battalion. We're heading back to the inn." Mio slapped Erma on the back.
"You're just going to leave me here with these heathens?" Erma groaned.
We got back to the inn and found Kana, Shayle, and Nyra playing like a trio of siblings. Kana was on all fours, with Nyra on his back and wielding a wooden sword. Meanwhile, Shayle pretended to be a big monster that they were fighting.
The make believe play ended as soon as we came in. Nyra jumped off Kana and ran up to me for a hug.
"Back already? Did you find anything out?" Shayle asked.
"About that…" I hesitated to answer.
"Oh." She looked at Elendir and put the pieces together. "I think I can guess it did not go well."
Mio and I explained what had happened out in the forest. Elendir was quiet the entire time, and actually looked hurt when we recounted the part about Tirnicia's sacrifice. For Shayle, too, this seemed like a very personal stake since it concerned Oakfall.
"The situation is much more dire than I expected then…" Shayle chewed on her thumb.
"Which is why, Nyra, we want your help." I kneeled down to eye level with her. "You've been having bad dreams. They can be very scary, right? We want to check your dreams to see if we can find anything that can help us fight the big bad demon named Servus, the Houndmaster."
"Ser… vus?" Nyra mouthed out the name and cocked her head.
"That's right. We'll be right there with you, so it shouldn't be scary!" Mio assured her.
"Nyra… wants to… help. Help!" She pumped both fists.
For the first time since coming back to Oakfall, Elendir brightened up. A single tear streaked down her cheek, and she saw Nyra not with a hint of fear, but gratitude.
"Okay. Let's do it then." I smiled, putting a fist out that was joined by Mio and Nyra.