Not far now, she thought to herself, her face tightening in determined anger. They left just before dawn yesterday... Demons don’t like to travel by sunlight...not even those of them who are capable of it.
As she moved, she mentally recited her father’s lessons by rote, doing the mental katas that he taught her even as she kept her eyes on the trail ahead of her. She’d hunted and fished with her father, and though game was scarce in the Barrens, they’d never once gone hungry. Not before or after Damasc had returned to his family.
As she moved, Elan promised herself that her hunger would not go unslaked this time, even though it wasn’t a physical hunger that gnawed at her ribs.
The dawn was lighting the sky when she found what she was looking for, the first signs she’d found of an occupied camp. The young girl drew her slim blade and moved forward slowly, her eyes narrowing as she made out a silhouette against the lightening sky.
*****
"Daylight shift," the Gorana demon muttered in its croaking language. "Who does that softskin think he is?"
The demon stood, disgustedly, out in the open, purportedly to watch for anyone trying to sneak up on the burrow his “comrades” were currently nestled snugly in. He and three other Goranas had been stationed roughly at the compass points as the sun rose on the horizon.
He hated the blue.
It was an odd thought, he supposed, but it was true. The Gorana demon actually despised the color blue. Especially sky blue. The thought of all that color hanging over him just drove him absolutely mad.
And here he was, stuck on daylight shift, with nothing except that scourge-be-damned blue over his head. It was enough to make one claustrophobic. Give him the expanse of stars and black any day, or at least a comfortable cave.
He never had a chance to consider how idiotic that particular thought really was, as his train of thought was abruptly cut off by a shadow rising from a rock to the west. He looked up, frowned oddly, and almost had a chance to speak.
Then the shadow slashed down at him, and the Gorana demon didn’t see any more blue.
*****
Elanthielle panted heavily for a long moment, her sword dug into the ground where her slice had finally stopped. The demon thing had stood for a moment, causing her to panic and try to pry her blade loose from the dirt, but it had jammed itself solidly and she could do nothing but stare in stark terror as the demon stared back at her.
It stared. She stared.
Then the thing just slumped to the ground, like all its bones had magically vanished, leaving Elan to stare at the body for some time before her breathing returned to normal. Her chest heaved, but the rate began to slow as she got herself back under control.
She felt something slide down her face and her left hand came up reflexively to brush it away. When her hand squished against her cheek, spreading whatever it was, she pulled it back quickly and stared at it.
In the slowly rising light, Elan could see the black ichor that passed for blood in the thing she had killed. Instantly the realization swept over her, causing her own blood to rush from her face.
She had killed a demon. She was covered in its blood.
An incredible urge to scream welled within her, and she fell back away from the body as she stared at the thing in shock. Her panting redoubled, and her chest heaved as she scrambled back, leaving her sword where it was stuck in the ground. She came back to a halt, her back pressed against the boulder she had leapt from, and opened her mouth to scream as her hands began to scrape at her face in an attempt to get the blood off.
No sound came out.
Slowly she came back to her senses. One agonizing step at a time, first regaining some control as she grabbed at her ragged tunic and wiped her face clean, and then another step as she looked at the inhuman body and recognized one of the creatures that had strung her father up.
She got back to her feet, her face setting itself as rationality returned, and she glared down at the thing on the ground and knew.
She knew that they could die now.
She knew that she could kill them.
She knew.
Elan grabbed the pommel of her blade and wrenched it from the ground with a powerful pull, a victorious feeling swelling up in her belly as she looked around for another target.
By the time the sun had risen to midmorning, Elan had located the next one. The ugly beast looked just like her first victim...her first target, she told herself firmly, refusing to honor these things with any human designation. It was hunkered down low in a crevice, hiding its eyes from the sun as it grumbled to itself in some strange language.
Elan didn’t care what it was thinking; she didn’t much care if it thought at all.
She just wanted it dead.
So she stalked closer, moving as quietly as the great cats her father had told her about. Her sword was a dull line against the sky above her as she lifted it over her head and leapt down into the crevice.
Four of them, Elan thought, wiping her face clean again. Killing is dirty work, she added softly in the back of her mind, dispassionately deciding that her tunic and pants were ruined. They would be hard to replace out here.
She didn't consider where her earlier rage had gone, but it wasn’t in her mind as she moved through the rock cropping, blood dripping from her face and hands, as she sought her next goal.
Now I must find what they were guarding.
She climbed out of the fourth such crevice she had been in so far that day and looked around. The sun was high in the sky now, just past its highest point and starting the long fall to darkness. That left her a few hours to do her work before the demons regained their advantage, she decided as she hefted her light blade and scoured the barren terrain with her eyes.
Somewhere there had to be a cave, she supposed. Father had told her that the demons had no love of the sun's light, so they would be under cover if they could. She didn't know much about the land around her, but the rocks seemed about right for an underground formation. The clean cuts looked like a place near home, one she had explored all her life.
Another few minutes of search, focusing in the center of where the four guards had been standing, found the entrance. Elan looked up at the sun one last time, then turned and strode into the dark of the cave.
She wasn't going to let them get away with what they had done.
Never.
No matter the cost.
It only took her a few steps to know that she had been right—the cave was very much like the ones near where she had grown up. Her mother had shown one of them to her at a very young age, telling her that if something happened, she should run there and wait.
Well, something had happened.
But there was no one coming to get her this time.
Elan blinked away a sudden rush of tears, forcing them back as her stomach knotted up with the pain that reached up and constricted her throat as well. She gritted her teeth at that, forcing it all down, deep down inside, and locking it away. She didn't have time for that, not now.
Maybe not ever.
So she kept moving down, along the smooth, carved steps that led deeper into the cave, watching the meager light reflect off the eerily perfect surface as she kept her eyes open for her prey. They were here; they had to be.
She couldn't come this far for nothing.
They had to be here.
And then, they were.
The first shadow in the semi-grey of the cave was her only clue that she’d come upon her prey. It was a spot against the wall that didn't reflect the tiny amount of light that infiltrated this deep. Elan held her breath, freezing in place as she looked intently at the shadow until her eyes adjusted to the low light and she began to make out details.