The two girls fell silent for a moment. It was like they needed a moment to think things over.

Then Lucy looked up to the sky. “Are you just going to leave her flying around up there?”

I had almost forgotten about Enna while I was explaining the situation.

“Ah, no I should call her down.” I hesitated for a moment.

Ameri smiled. “Don’t worry, we won’t harm her.”

“Thanks.”

I took a step back and started waving to Enna. “It’s alright, you can come down.” I shouted.

Enna must have heard me, because she began descending with each circle, she made overhead.

The rest of our group had kept their distance and left me to make the explanations to the two girls. In that time, they had helped Rosa move the carriage out of the way into the woods and unloaded most of our gear.

Seeing that things had calmed down, Serin and Aetherin approached the three of us.

As they drew near, Enna touched down on the ground just in front of us.

Serin waved to Enna and then turned to me. “Have you explained everything now?”

I shrugged. “Well almost…”

“You mean there’s more?” Asked Ameri.

I nodded. “Just one more thing…” I turned to Aetherin. “You’ve already met, but there is something you don’t know about her.”

Ameri laughed. “Don’t tell me, she’s a demon too?” She asked in a slightly sarcastic tone.

“Yes, she is.”

“What? But she looks human!”

“She does… She’s a vampire.”

Both Ameri and Lucy took a step back. The concern was written over their faces.

Seeing this Aetherin slowly stepped forward with both hands open to show her intent. “Don’t worry, no harm will come to either of you from me. I don’t believe Theo wouldn’t forgive me if I harmed a human without good reason, and I wouldn’t want that.”

Lucy didn’t look convinced. “But you drink blood, human blood.”

“Oh, I do. I’ve drank many a human dry…” She laughed. “I’m not going to drink your blood, not unless you offered, and I definitely wouldn’t take enough to harm you.”

This unsurprisingly didn’t settle the pair down.

I decided to step in. “It’s okay, she isn’t going to hurt anyone. When she needs to drink blood, she has me.”

Lucy looked at me, her jaw was almost hanging down. “You give her your blood, doesn’t that worry you?”

“Not really. I know she will only take what she needs.”

Serin coughed. “It isn’t only Theo that has done or would do so. We’ve all offered our blood when Aetherin needed it. She is one of us.”

The pair looked surprised to hear this from Serin too, but they still seemed a little awkward in front of Aetherin. I knew only sometime around her, and the other girls would put them full at rest.

Enna had joined us while we had been discussing Aetherin, but Lucy and Ameri seemed much less concerned about her than they did Aetherin.

Serin looked over to the rest of our party a small way off. She rubbed her hands together. “We should round everyone up and head to the camp. Could you show us the way Enna?”

Enna nodded. “Of course.”

“Great.” Serin turned back to the rest the party. “Come on, we’re making for the camp.”

After her call everyone started heading towards us.

We waited until we were all together and then Enna began to walk us into the forest.

As we followed, Lucy walked alongside me. “So, we’ll meet the other harpies at the camp?”

“We will, they went on ahead before us.”

“And they’re all safe for us to be around?”

“They are, I promise. They’ve saved all our lives and I trust them with mine.”

“Okay…”

It was only a short way into the wood before we reached the clearing where the harpies had decided to set up camp. They were all sat around in a circle waiting for us, but as they saw us arrive, they got to their feet.

Ceraphine walked over to meet us. “Theo! Am I glad to see you again.”

I laughed. “I’m glad to see you too. It has only been half a day though.”

“I know, but I still missed you.” She looked over our group and noticed the two new faces. “We’ve gained more members?”

“Yes…” I stepped a little to the side so she could see the pair and gestured towards them. “This is Lucy and Ameri. They’re a little wary of demonkind, it is their first time interacting with any of you like this.”

“I understand how they feel.”

It was the same for the harpies, they had only fought against humans in the past.

Ceraphine slowly stepped forward and offered her hand. “I’m Ceraphine… Uh so this is probably a little difficult for all of us, but if you’re a friend of Theo’s, I would like to get along.”

Lucy took in deep breath and then took her hand. “I’m lucy.” She turned to Ameri.

Ameri paused for a moment, but eventually followed suit and took Ceraphine’s hand. “And I’m Ameri… It’s err nice to meet you.”

“You too.” Ceraphine turned to me. “Are you going to join us? Everyone was waiting for you to get here.”

“Thanks, I will in a while. I need to help the others set up camp first. I can’t just slack off while the others do the work, sorry.”

She looked disappointed. “Really?”

I laughed. “Yes… I’ll get in trouble if I don’t help.”

“What about us?”

“I don’t think anyone would complain, but I’m sure they would be grateful if you offered a hand.”

“I’ll go and round up the rest of the girls.” Ceraphine span around and jogged towards the rest of the harpies.

Lucy and Ameri both seemed to have relaxed a little. Neither girl seemed to be quite as on edge as they had been only minutes before.

Lucy turned to me. “She seemed just like a normal girl!”

I nodded. “As far as I can tell, she is. Well, you know apart from being a demon.”

“They aren’t what I expected at all.”

“I know how you feel…” I glanced across the clearing to where the rest of the party were unloading our gear. “I had better go and help, we don’t have much daylight left.”

Ameri turned to Lucy. “We should set our tent too before it gets dark.”

The three of us made our way to rest of the group.

It was time to begin what was now quite the well worn routine and set up the camp for the night.

Ceraphine made good on her word and roped the rest of the harpy girls in setting up the camp. With the extra numbers we soon had everything set up and a large fire lit in the centre of the clearing.

With the camp made our now rather large group assembled around the fire as the evening meal cooked away.

As I took my seat at the fire’s edge, I was joined by Lucy and Ameri. The pair took a seat either side of me. They both seemed keen to talk with me and I was glad of the opportunity to get to know the pair a little better.

I took the chance. “Why have you both decided to travel Dunshelm? Surely you must have heard about the trouble at the moment?”

Lucy nodded. “We’ve heard a little, not that we really know what to believe… But we’ve wanted to head back for a while, when the guild master asked us, it seemed like the perfect opportunity.”

“You’ve been to Dunshelm before?”

Both Lucy and Ameri laughed.

Ameri put her hand on my shoulder. “You heroes really aren’t from our world. You can’t have spent much time here otherwise you would’ve noticed!”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Our accents… We both grew up in Dunshelm.”

“I couldn’t tell at all!”

“Well, they’ve been lost a little after years of travelling around and living in Silthorn. You see Lucy and I both joined the guild as soon as we were old enough. We formed a party with a few of our friends and set out in search of adventure and to see the world.”

Lucy had been staring at the fire turned to Ameri. “Yet somehow we found ourselves in that dead end town Silthorn with four friends less than we set out with…”

“Have they already returned ahead of you?”

Ameri shook her head. “They’re all dead.”

I fell silent for a second. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked…”

Lucy waved her hands. “It’s okay, they all knew it was dangerous before we left. Not that we wanted to lose any of them… You must realise already just how precarious being an adventure is?”

“I do.”

I said that and while I did, unlike them I had spent almost all of my time in the care of high ranking adventurers. I was buffered from a lot of harm, even if we had been in many dangerous situations already.