Chapter 170: leaving the mountain pass
Ren looked at her.
"So you came here specifically to find me," he said.
"Yes," she replied, like it was the simplest thing in the world. "You are the avatar of Lord Crimson. Finding you was only a matter of time." She straightened slightly and gave a small bow, the motion carrying a particular elegance that did not fit the context of standing in a mountain pass surrounded by the aftermath of a battle. "I am Fey. The Necromancer. Master of Death."
She completed the bow and immediately stepped forward, her hand reaching for Ren’s arm with the ease of someone who had decided the formality was over and the familiarity could begin.
Two figures moved before her hand arrived.
Ezra stepped in front of Ren from the left, spear already angled forward, the tip pointed directly at Fey’s chest with the particular steadiness of someone who had not decided yet whether to use it and was perfectly comfortable either way. Luna came in from the right, her own presence filling the gap, her eyes carrying none of the friendliness that her face was capable of when she chose to show it.
"Step away from Master Ren," Ezra said.
Fey stopped. She looked at Ezra. Then at Luna. Then back at Ezra. The expression on her face shifted into something that was amused in the way that dangerous things were sometimes amused, a particular quality of finding the situation interesting rather than threatening.
"Are you both servants of Lord Crimson as well?" she asked.
Luna looked at her with flat eyes.
"We are not servants of whoever that is," she said. "We serve Master Ren. Only Master Ren."
Fey’s gaze moved past them to Ren, understanding registering.
"I see," she said. "Well then. Since he is the avatar of Lord Crimson, I suppose that amounts to the same thing in the end."
Ren put his palm against his forehead.
He turned around and walked away from the conversation before it could develop further, heading back toward where the rest of the group had gathered in the aftermath of the battle. The mountain pass around them was significantly worse than it had been an hour ago, scorched and cratered and littered with the evidence of everything that had happened, but every face he scanned as he walked through it was still breathing.
Count Liam was standing near the carriages, looking exactly like someone who had survived something they had not fully prepared for and was still in the process of filing that experience into whatever category it belonged in. He looked at Ren as he approached.
"Seems we managed," he said.
"We did," Ren agreed. He rolled his shoulder, feeling the places where the Dragon’s Bane had worked through him before he overcame it, the memory of it still present in his muscles even if the substance itself was gone. "I did not see all of that coming. Somehow Ken had Dragon’s Bane. Used it on me during the fight." He paused. "It was not a pleasant feeling."
Liam’s expression sharpened immediately.
"Dragon’s Bane," he repeated.
"Yes."
"That is extremely illegal," Liam said, and the way he said it carried the weight of someone who meant illegal in a way that went beyond simple law-breaking. "There was a dragon who cleared an entire town in Vermilion because they discovered it was being produced there. The kingdom banned it completely after that. The penalties for even possessing it are significant."
"I can see why," Ren said. "I would not wish that on many things."
He looked out at the pass for a moment, at the crater Ken had left behind, at the space where a man had stood not long ago burning with something he had purchased at a price that had finished collecting itself in the most visible way possible.
"I do not understand what pushed him that far," Ren said. "A loss against a dragon is still a life kept. Most who face one do not walk away at all. He walked away and then chose to come back for this."
"Extreme resentment," Leon said, coming up beside him.
"No," Ren said. "There was something else behind it. Something pushed him." He looked at the others. "He had sold his heart. Gave it up for demonic power. That is what the transformation was."
The change in Liam’s face was immediate.
Every other expression that had been there cleared away and what replaced it was something considerably more focused and considerably less comfortable.
"Say that again," Liam said.
"Demonic power," Ren said. "He traded his heart for it. Whatever made that deal with him completed its side of things during the fight."
Liam was quiet for a moment that had too much happening in it to be called simple silence.
"If demons are interfering with humans directly," he said slowly, "that is not something I can keep to myself. Demons have not moved like this in a very long time. If they are beginning to infiltrate, if they are making deals and handing out power, that information needs to reach people higher than me." He looked at Ren directly. "This changes the nature of what we are walking into."
Ren shrugged.
"Let’s just get moving," he said.
He turned toward the carriages and the rest of the group followed his lead, everyone climbing back in with the weary efficiency of people who had used up most of what they had and were ready to sit down.
Fey moved toward Ren’s carriage with her usual unhurried ease and positioned herself to take the seat beside him before anyone else could.
Ezra sat down on his left.
Luna sat down on his right.
The space beside Ren was entirely occupied before Fey arrived at the door.
She looked at the two of them sitting there, unmoved, looking back at her with expressions that communicated very clearly that no further discussion on the matter was going to be productive.
Fey’s smile did not shift in the slightest.
She turned and took the remaining seat beside Lia, settling in with the same composure she had carried through everything else, her hands folded in her lap, that particular wide smile still present on her face as if the outcome had been exactly what she wanted all along.
Lia looked at her sideways.
Fey looked back.
The carriages began to move, the horses finding their rhythm, and the mountain pass fell away behind them as the convoy rolled forward into whatever came next.