Sadrahan’s second landing within was met with more consternation than the first. “Who are you?” Asked several demons who didn’t know him.

And cries of, “Sadrahan?!” From those who did.

“There is no time!” Sadrahan hissed. “There is a place. A place of safety! I can get some of you out, there is a fire, a distraction, now hurry and grab on! Anyone I can’t get, if I can’t find a way back in, go to the mountain where the rubies are mined, head that way and we will find you!” He exclaimed and grabbed the nearest trio and launched himself into the air again.

Each time he landed as the screams and conflagration spread with the fire, he saw more of the gash. The earthen layers were thick, and made of multiple layers of multicolored rock, some of which was wholly unfamiliar to Sadrahan’s eyes.

The bottom level was filled with demons of various types, from the goat legged to the bat faced, from red skin to coal, from the pearl white to the deep purple. There were demons that Sadarahan could clearly identify as being of his kind, but looked little like the neighbors he knew from his village.

What was clear was that they were being worked to death, their limbs were thin and marks from abuse were deep on many of their bodies, they had little clothing to speak of, tatters and shreds of what they once wore, in a single moment of impulsive insight Sadrahan wondered, ‘Could I guess how long they’ve been here by how tattered their clothing is?’

After multiple trips gathering those he could, and hearing the chaos outside begin to subside, he landed one more time. “Listen to me!” He snapped to the cacophony of voices and desperate, searching hands, “I have to go!” A few desperate demons pushed their youngest toward him, staggering forward on limp, badly healed and injured limbs, he caught two, then one more as he crouched down, “But I will come back! Stay alive! Stay alive and…” He searched for a phrase that would work to calm the desperate hands that surrounded him, and turned his eyes toward the mountain, “Watch the mountain!”

He made his voice as much like that of his chief when the old man was passionate about something, and something in his conviction gave them pause, the hands that clawed at his arms and tried to grab hold to save themselves relaxed and he seized the moment and took to the air one last time. ‘Look to the mountain, what does that even mean?’ He wondered what in spirit’s name he’d been thinking, long after he’d finally risen out of view. The flames he’d begun were dying, and the buildings he’d lit aflame were toppled and blackened ruins. Embers were still being doused by water and dirt well after he’d landed far out of view of even the best human eyes. ‘I wonder how many died in the flames? Five? Ten? More?’ It shocked him most how little that mattered to him.

The place he landed was a dozen paces in front of Sarilith, her dark hair, face, and eyes all conspired to keep her hidden even from himself. Had she not been moving, he doubted he would have seen her at all. He set the three adolescent demons down on the ground as she approached. “This is all real, isn’t it, you’re real, all of this…?” She asked, swallowing a lump in her throat, “What about your wife?”

“She didn’t make it.” Sadrahan said and tightened his lips in a thin line. “Our daughter did.”

Sarilith put her hand to her mouth and gasped, “I’m… I’m sorry. We should have listened to you.”

“There’s no time for regret. You got out first, wait for the others to catch up, go together toward there,” Sadrahan pointed in the direction of his mountain, “and avoid our old village, there are humans there.”

She hissed like a snake when he said that, her fingers, gnarled and badly healed after being broken, tensed enough that they ached. “How far?” She asked.

“Flight is hours, walking? Much more, weeks.” He said.

Her companion frowned, “We don’t have enough strength for weeks.”

“You won’t need it.” Sadrahan said, “I’ll start carrying you a few at a time, just keep moving toward it to shorten the trip, and stay together. Will the humans chase you? How long before they find you’re gone?”

“The tame demons will report it if they saw. They are not kept with the rest of us, they die in the night if they remain down with us.” Sarilith explained, “If they didn’t? Someone below may report it in exchange for favors. If they do not? They may not notice until tomorrow night when they count us. They will come then, and they will catch us.”

“Then I can take some back now, keep them all together, Sarilith, I will return. Just keep moving.” Sadrahan put his hand over her heart, “The village is not dead, because we are not dead. It has only moved.” He said, and bloody tears clouded her eyes before he grabbed the three again and launched himself to the air. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw her holding up her hands and waving stragglers over to her, though he couldn’t hear what she said, and he could only hope she was persuasive.

The drop off back at his mountain went off with only one single issue. ‘My daughter.’ His nerves tingled at the thought of what he might have to do. ‘Leaving her for any length of time… I hate it, but this is worse…’ He went to her little crib of stone and picked her up into his arms. A skin of goats’ blood was waiting for him there, and to his surprise, there was also Liln.

“You carved this yourself?” She asked and ran her hands over the stone, her blood colored eyes lingering on the empty space where Lamashi lay only moments before, the stone still warm beneath her touch.

“She needed a place, a safe place.” Sadrahan said and watched the tiny demoness gulp from the lip of the skin.

“So do we all.” Liln answered. “They killed them, you know.” She said without looking up.

“What?” Sadrahan asked.

“The infants, the babies, the ones who were too small to work, dashed their brains out on the rocks and said it pleased their god, they did it before we ever left home. You could search that gash in the earth all day and all night, and you won’t find anyone younger than someone old enough to carry a bucket of water or swing one of their picks. I never saw one from any of the other villages who was your daughter’s age. Now we all need a safe place… and you gave it to us.”

Sadrahan wasn’t sure what to say to that, the trio he’d dropped off was dunking their hands into water and slurping it up between bites of meat still on the bone, they were oblivious.

“I meant what I said before. I’ve got no one left. There’s no reason to refuse me.” Liln added, “Nobody should be alone after all this… and I think… I think I do understand. We’re like a village again, we need each other.” She looked up at him and put her slender hand against the bicep that held his daughter.

Sadrahan cleared his throat. “That’s… that’s good of you. But Lamash wasn’t just a mate to me, not just a wife, she was a friend, my oldest and dearest. I’m not ready to let go of her.”

“The dead have no claim on the living.” Liln retorted, and he only gave a small nod of his head.

“But the living do, and my wife is still alive inside me, and I don’t know if she’ll ever make room for any other. But if you want to do something for me?” Sadrahan asked when he heard the gulping of his daughter stop and drew the skin away.

“I do.” Liln answered with a fervent, almost fanatical nod as her heart caught fire in her breast.

“I have to take skins of goats’ blood and water to the ones I got out, the ones I didn’t bring back yet. And I may be unable to come back as quickly as before. Mind my Lamashi for me until I get back.” Sadrahan made his request, and Liln felt her flaming heart seize up in her breast as he lay the infant back down in her stone crib.

“And if you don’t come back?” Liln demanded, her eyes narrowed at him as if he’d forgotten that was a possibility.

“Keep doing it.” He said.

Liln exhaled hard, “Fine. It’s a promise. Offer a man myself and he offers me his daughter… what a world.” She gave a grim chuckle and added, “At least she’s prettier than her father.”

“That she is. She takes after her mother I’d say.” Sadrahan answered and added, “Thank you.”

Then with that, he gathered several recently made goatskins full of a mix of lakewater and goats’ blood and slung them over his shoulder, and departed to the sounds of demon howls and cheers from the base of the mountain. ‘Did they wait for me? What are they all going on about?’ Sadrahan wondered as his harried mind raced over the issues at hand and the threats that lay ahead. ‘Humans will chase them, but they have a head start, however they ‘think’ or likely will think that they’re just running down some escaped captives who got out during the chaos. They won’t see me coming. Just like ambushing deer at the lake. Approach from above and behind, they’ll never see it coming till it’s too late.’

Such was Sadrahan’s thinking when he reached the escapees and distributed the skins to desperate, longing claws beset by wails and rumbling bellies. Their sunken faces and haunted eyes stared at him as if he were one of their gods descended from the heavens, sent to bring them salvation. “Drink, it’s goats’ blood and water, it won’t fill you up, but it’s a start. You shouldn’t eat too much until you’ve got more in you.” He explained, but the questions from those eagerly holding out their waiting hands for a turn at drinking, demanded answers.

“Are you going to carry more of us back?” An unfamiliar goat demon asked, his sunken cheeks stood out all the more on his long face, and his goat legs seemed to shake, struggling to support even a body weight that was so low that Sadrahan could see his individual ribs.

“Eventually.” Sadrahan answered, which triggered gasps, whimpers, and bloody tears from the weary ones.

“You’re going to leave us to fend for ourselves… we’ll die, most of us… are you saving only the strong…?” The goat demon asked, the fur on his face was patchy, and the skin beneath that Sadrahan could see, flushed red with anger.

Sadrahan though, held up his clawed and thick right hand with palm out in a placating gesture. “If the humans chase you, what happens if they catch up?”

The already pallid faces became moreso, and not a few of the gathered little mob were trembling at the possibility.

“If I’m away ferrying some of you back, the rest will die, and it takes hours of flying back and forth to accomplish that to even bring a few of you.” Sadrahan explained as gently as he could.

“Then why even bother… you’re just going to let us d-” An unfamiliar young voice began, but Sadrahan cut it off in an instant.

“I’m not leaving you to die. The humans will expect to be tracking down a handful of escapees on foot. I’ll… think of something.” He said and his shoulders briefly slumped while he did his best to hold their eyes to his, “Look, this is dangerous, I know it, I might save none of you, or all of you. This is all a game of pitch and toss. There’s no promise I can make to you, knowing I’ll be keeping it. All I can do is try.”

The escapees rumbled a fair bit, until Sarilith put her hand over his chest with her injured claws digging into his skin. “You got us this far. If we die, at least it won’t be there, starving to death and begging for food. Even if we’re just bait, it’s something.”

Sadrahan swallowed and covered her hand with his, and then looked over her head at the rest of them, who turned their eyes up to him after a humbled downward look at the ground beneath their feet and hooves.

“Right. But… maybe I shouldn’t be making this decision for you. So, what will it be?” Sadrahan asked, “Do I take two of you at a time back to the mountain, or do I try to deal with your pursuers?”

“If we had some way to fight back,” an unknown figure answered, “I’d feel better about letting you face them. Their spears keep them out of reach of our claws, plus they have bows and swords.”

‘That is a good point, a weapon in hand might help them with some confidence.’ Sadrahan thought that over and glanced to the left and right. ‘Their claws are probably not in the best condition right now anyway…’ Sadrahan realized when he looked at their hands, more than a few had fingers that had been broken at some point and not properly healed, some had their claws reduced to almost nothing.

He made a sudden decisive nod and walked to the trees on one side of the forest, after activating his cutting skill, he began to slice off branches from a handful of trees, stacking them in one arm and hefting them over his shoulder until he had enough. He then walked back to the confused little mob and dumped the branches at their feet. “There. Clubs. Cut them into shape as best you can while you walk. It’s better than nothing. Right?” He asked, and Sarilith crouched down, took one in hand, and bowed her head to him when she rose up.

“It will do.” She answered, and it prompted the rest to hastily gather around and take up ‘clubs’ of their own. Angry rumbles went up from them all as if having a weapon in hand, however crude, allowed their fear to transform itself into anger.

“Good, then walk ahead, hopefully you will have to do nothing. But if you do, I’ll make it as little as possible…” Sadrahan scratched his horn and looked over their heads in the direction they’d come from. “Somehow.” He finished. Then he listened to their scratching claws as they began to work on their weapons while they walked ahead, placing distance between Sadrahan, themselves, and their tormentors.

AN: Enjoying this novel?  Consider starting off the new year by supporting your writer on Patreon as little as one dollar per month gets you access to downloadable pdf/epub books and early chapter releases, plus it brings the author closer to writing full time.