Lillene

Enjoy!

Where did the Lesser Sorrow Demon come from? 

The question bothered Serenity. It wasn’t the only question that bothered him, but it was the one he couldn’t resolve just by asking Aki. She didn’t know where it came from; Russ didn’t have any idea either. Serenity could tell that it wasn’t a dungeon monster from another dungeon. That seriously limited its possible origin, but he wasn’t certain where to start, other than getting it out of the way for now.

Serenity patted the Sorrow Demon’s head. It didn’t even seem to notice as it soaked the fabric of his slightly-too-short sweatpants. Serenity still didn’t know how Rissa managed to find pants that were even that close, but he was grateful now that she’d insisted on it. He hadn’t expected to use the Arcane Asura shape in anything approaching a public setting.

Serenity turned back towards Aki. “Are you going to try to bind it to the dungeon?” Serenity was pretty certain that was a thing dungeons could do. It wasn’t common, at least not as far as he knew, but even Vengeance had heard the rumors that it was possible.  The fact that he’d bound Desinka to his dungeon on Tzintkra implied that the rumors had a basis in fact.

“If I can,” Aki agreed. “Demons aren’t on any of my lists right now and I think she’d make an excellent enhancement to an environmental hazard. If she’s unique, I’ll need to protect her, but if I can bind her, I can have her reform if she’s killed.”

Serenity nodded at that; it made sense. If Aki used her as an environmental hazard more than anything else, she probably wouldn’t get killed very often anyway. After all, who would kill the crying child that lured you into a dangerous area if all the child did was cry and sit there? 

Well, some people definitely would if they decided it was the child’s fault or the child was a monster. They wouldn’t even be wrong in this case. Serenity still suspected that the Lesser Sorrow Demon would probably be “rescued” more often than it was killed.

“What do you need in order to bind her?” Serenity lifted his leg and started trying to carry the Sorrow Demon towards the Adventurers’ Guild building that hid the entrance to Aki’s dungeon. Walking with a Lesser Sorrow Demon latched on to your leg turned out to be surprisingly possible. It wasn’t comfortable and it was definitely more work, but it was possible. 

“Time,” Aki answered. “Well, time with it and it has to accept the binding. That’s usually not a problem; anything that spends that kind of time in a dungeon probably wants to stay. Getting the benefits of a dungeon on top of a place to live isn’t a hard choice.”

That sounded like Aki had done it before. Well, she was a dungeon on Asihanya for a long time; it could easily have happened there. “Does that mean that that moose…”

“Became a dungeon resident?” Aki finished Serenity’s sentence for him. “Two or three have, yes, but mostly it’s more common animals. Squirrels, for example. I have a lot of squirrels. Birds, rabbits … all sorts of things on that scale and smaller. I’m not generally offering much to most of them other than a nice place to live; I don’t want to reform worms just so that the same bird can eat them unless I have to. Something unique like a Demon of Sorrow is a good choice.”

Serenity nodded and looked up at the building ahead of him. How was he going to fit through the doorway? Even without the added complication of a surprisingly heavy crying demon clinging to his leg, Serenity’s Arcane Asura shape simply wasn’t built for walking inside ordinary human construction. He’d have to crawl through the doorway and that might not work with the demon on his leg. “I think I’d better try shifting to another form.”

Russ took a look at the building ahead of them, then nodded. “Are you certain the demon won’t attack? Lorelai will if you threaten them. Or if they think you might threaten them or you have some similarity to anything that scared or threatened them in the past … vengeful spirits aren’t exactly creatures inclined to leave people alone.” He rubbed his shoulder. Somehow, Serenity suspected that Russ was remembering the results of dealing with a Lorelai in the past. 

“There’s only one way to find out, and I’d rather do it here than inside.” Serenity patted the Demon of Sorrow on the back and addressed it directly. “I’m going to shift shapes. I’m still the same person, OK?”

The demon didn’t reply. Serenity shrugged to himself; he couldn’t even be certain the demon understood him. 

His chimera shape was probably best. It was, other than its height, scales, claws, and leg structure, fairly similar to the Arcane Asura form. Admittedly, those were a lot of differences, but it was at least not much farther away than his human shape, which was missing the height and wings, and it had the huge benefit of having scales. He’d feel more comfortable with the admittedly partial protection of his incomplete dragonscale hide.

The fact that his chimera shape was wearing armor while his human shape was in only jeans and a T-shirt under the assumption that he’d be able to either put on armor or at least trigger a shielding enchantment didn’t hurt. 

Serenity patted the demon again before he shifted shape. 

It was uncomfortable shifting while something held him. He actually had to move away from the demon during the shift; he couldn’t reform his body with the demon’s arm through his chest.

The moment he moved away from the demon, it curled up into a ball and seemed to sob even louder. 

Serenity finished shifting as quickly as he could; while he knew that this wasn’t actually a sad or hurt child, it still felt wrong to not try to comfort it. He leaned over the child and cautiously reached out to it. “It’s okay. I told you, I just had to shift. I needed to be able to walk into the building.”

The Sorrow Demon curled itself tighter for a moment, then blinked and looked up at Serenity. The tears and obvious crying stopped for a moment as it seemed to think, then it launched itself up at Serenity.

He had to actively resist his first reaction of knocking it away from him. This probably wasn’t an attack; at least, he hoped it wasn’t. It certainly seemed like the Sorrow Demon couldn’t talk.

The demon grabbed Serenity’s chest and hugged just as hard as it had hugged his leg. Serenity realized he’d definitely been correct earlier; this was definitely not entirely comfortable. Breathing was difficult, though he could still manage it. The worst part was that the demon had grabbed one of his wings as well as his chest; he thought it might have torn something. At the minimum, he had a strained wing joint. He was grateful his healing would handle that once he pried the demon off his wing.

Out of the corner of his eye, Serenity saw Russ’s soulblade disappear. He’d clearly pulled it out in the same instant that Serenity had to decide not to fight the demon’s leap. “That was special. I take it the demon isn’t actually trying to harm you?”

“I don’t think so,” Serenity agreed. “Its strength really makes the point that it’s not actually a  child, though. Let’s head on in.” He wanted to drop the demon off where Aki wanted it as quickly as possible now. 

Serenity took a step forward and realized that wasn’t going to work; unlike before, when he could pick up his leg to lift the demon off the ground with each step, he needed to move his leg through where the demon was to step forward properly. 

He grabbed the demon by its sides and lifted it like the child it resembled. While it was far stronger than a child, it was still far weaker than Serenity. He repositioned the demon’s arms so that one was over his right shoulder while the other was under his left arm; that way, it wouldn’t be hugging his neck as hard as possible and he could hold the demon’s legs up and out of the way with his right arm. Now he could walk normally. It wasn’t convenient but it would work.

Russ held the door for Serenity as he led the way into the Adventurers’ Guild building. Unlike the last time Serenity was there, it wasn’t empty other than the receptionist; there were several people in the waiting area in front and Serenity could hear laughter and conversation coming from the back. Kerr had to be pleased with that; she wanted the place to be used.

“You’re not Raz,” were the first words Serenity heard when he walked up to the receptionist. Becca was on duty again, just like the last time he went underground.

“Were you expecting him?” Serenity didn’t think he was all that similar to Raz, really. Sure, they were both draconic, but Serenity wasn’t draykin. For that matter, Raz was almost always in his dragon form inside Aki; he’d finally managed to figure out how to take on his draykin form but it wasn’t easy.

“Not exactly?” Becca shrugged. “But he’s the one who brings odd stuff inside and I’m going to have to say that a weeping metallic child is definitely odd.”

Serenity chuckled at that. “I guess this really is his job, now that you mention it. You said to mention when I head into the dungeon; I’m heading into the dungeon now. I’m not planning to kill anything, but if you could avoid sending people to the third floor until I get back, it would be helpful.”

“There’s a group exploring it now. I hope that’s not a problem.” Becca frowned. “Are you really planning to take a child into the dungeon?”

Serenity was surprised for a moment; she worked for the Guild, shouldn’t she recognize a demon when she saw one?

A moment later, he wanted to slap his forehead. He couldn’t because of the demon in his arms, but he still wanted to. She wasn’t a delver or mercenary like most of the people who worked for the Mercenaries’ Guild; why would she know? 

“I need to get my hands on some monster training material. It’d be useful for … well, for everyone. This is a demon, technically a Lesser Demon of Sorrow. I’m not sure how it got here, unless someone summoned it, but that doesn’t explain why it was just sitting in a spot in the marsh when we found it. Unintelligent demons are dangerous even when they’re as weak as this one, but taking it into the dungeon to see if it wants to settle in there seems like a better choice than just killing it.” Serenity frowned. He really needed to look into where it came from. He’d do that as soon as the Lesser Demon that he had trouble not thinking of as a child was situated and comfortable.

“Summoned?” Becca stared at the demon for a long moment. “You mean like the badger monster? I heard it wasn’t the only one.”

“Badger monster?” Serenity could think of half a dozen different things that could be described as “badger monsters,” but most of them required really specific spells to summon that only resulted in a temporary image of the monster. “The demon isn’t temporary. It’s here for good.”

Becca frowned. “I’m not sure the badger monster was temporary. It lasted more than an hour before the police took it away.”

“It’s still around,” Russ admitted. “It hadn’t occurred to me that they might be connected; Serenity, I’ll take you by to see it as well as the summoning spell remains as soon as we’re done with this demon.”

“Summoning spell?” Serenity tried to raise one eyebrow at Russ but was pretty certain both moved. “You didn’t mention a summoning spell.”

Russ looked down. “I wanted to see what you thought of the spell before I told you what it did, in case there was something you’d see that Red didn’t.”

Lillene

Russ would probably have remembered the “badger monster” eventually. Probably. He definitely remembered the fake Solomon vases.