As the Heralds of Light trudged through the Fields of Evil, burning crops and salting the earth as they marched towards the heart of Daemonium, our protagonist had a Devil of his own to face.

-Tam the Bard, The Rise of the Emperor Reborn

Cyn grimaced slightly at the throbbing headache that had built up from the little stunt he had pulled earlier. Apparently separating a bit of your Aura and infusing it with Fame till it mutated into a form capable of magic was really painful. It literally felt like you were tearing your own body apart. There was a reason it wasn’t listed in any of the books as a valid technique. That and nobody had faced the same problem he was facing.

Well, if it was the price he had to pay to stoke his ego, so be it. And, let’s not forget an aching waist from Ira’s irate fingers. So, the girl could get jealous. How adorable.

Ashish’s group led the way down the train’s corridors to a compartment which had been rearranged for the feast.

Thirteen pairs of eyes turned to them as they entered the compartment. Ten of those were from teenagers who were lounging on seats set against the walls surrounding a table laden with an assortment of food and beverages. Three belonged to their guards. Two men and a woman in eclectic attires. S rank mercenaries as far as he could tell from their Auras.

In particular, he didn’t like the man with a garish feather stuck behind his ear, or, it could have been the covetous look he was directing at Pavo’s tail. ‘Don’t worry Pavo, I’ll keep you safe.’ Mentally soothing the testy peacock, he turned to study his peers.

‘Nerd, uptight guy, nerd, space, socialite A, socialite Queen, jock, socialite B, emo literary wannabe, space, cool dude, space, space, lots of space, and misfit. Add in mister leader complex here and you have the entire menagerie.’ Classifying them mentally didn’t take long and as Ashish took the initiative to introduce them, he had a name to go with the faces.

Artemis was still lurking and seeing that the guards weren’t reacting to her, Cyn couldn’t help but be impressed by her stealth ability. And slightly disturbed. Was she watching whenever he made out with Ira? He didn’t know.

Casting aside any thoughts of Artemis’ voyeuristic hobbies with a shake of his head, Cyn went about interacting with everyone in the room. Pavo attracted a lot of attention and using him as an icebreaker was a method as effective as any. Thwarting Ashish’s juvenile attempts at enraging the peacock was as simple as keeping the bird on his shoulder and sending a sense of calm through his Aura. He learnt that Queen, Ashish and the jock were children of Viscounts while the rest were of a Baron’s lineage.

Avarita, due to his rustic origins had an unpolished edge even after two years of training in etiquette. This somehow sparked an interest in cool dude, who in reality was a martial fanatic who had been finding his peers boring. Getting to know that Avarita had undergone two years of formal Knight training before his enlightenment, his curiosity about the process initiated their conversation which soon devolved into a debate about the best training regimens, drawing in the two male guards and the male with zero presence from Ashish’s group.

Ira dropped her ice queen persona and integrated herself into the socialite clique, dragging Parvati with her. Soon a discussion about the latest trends in attires and cosmetics had sprung up with a fervour equal to that of the ‘Dao discussion’, as that was what the pretentious bunch were calling it, even managing to drag the female mercenary into the vortex.

Cyn watched with admiration as with a conversational nudge here and a poke there, Ira weaved a net of words to trawl through their dialog to fish for secrets. If he didn’t enjoy her personality shifts so much during their lovemaking sessions, he would have been put off by her performance.

Cyn gave Ashish the slip as he was busy comparing dick sizes with the jock, who had been demoted to horndog after noting his undisguised lust towards everything female. Misfit seemed so profoundly uncomfortable to be there that anyone even approaching him felt put off by his presence thus, Cyn walked up to the erudite trio who had somehow gathered near emo poet.

Emo poet turned out to have a genuine justification for his current state, his mother having recently passed away. The four of them were mutually acquainted and thus, were surprised when the boy and his peacock barged into their conversation.

After a few moments of conversation, Cyn learnt that all four of them were from neighbouring baronies and three of them were going to attend a conference on steam technology while emo was going there to meet up with his maternal grandfather who like his was in the Kingsguard. The books that had caused him to brand them as nerds were schedules for the conference while Uptight was very nice gentleman who just had the misfortune of having a mother overly fond of pomade.

Cyn had initially neglected his invitation to the conference but after his awakening, knowing the importance of Fame, he was looking forward to it. He hoped it would earn him enough Fame to partly emolliate his problem.

Upon learning that Cyn was a speaker at the conference, they excitedly started discussing his work. Seeing that Emo was feeling left out, Cyn fished for a common interest, finally settling on, surprisingly, archery.

The four had trained under the same master and had different takes on his teachings while Cyn’s experience as the Chief, while lacking in formal training, was full of practical knowhow from decades of handling a bow. They all found themselves enriched by the conversation and even Emo brightened up.

Bored, Pavo had busied himself with the food and after demolishing a quarter of the table’s contents was waddling about contentedly, searching for a comfortable spot for a siesta.

Not much attention was paid when Misfit walked out of the room and those who noticed, ignored his departure. Except for Artemis.

A master of using Aura to hide in plain sight, she had immediately noticed that the boy was using a similar technique.

Her unique ability Mistress of the Hunt caused the line of sight of anyone who was looking at her to slide away while blocking any sound or odour emitted by her. It also made her Theca imitate the skin of a chameleon making her exceedingly difficult to spot even if someone broke the illusion. The Precept being that she could only activate it while standing in a patch of shadow and that the illusionary portion of the camouflage would expire against a foe with stronger Destiny. The second portion was actually an advantage as those with greater Destiny would be able to sense the illusion anyway and thus be alerted to her presence.

The boy had used a similar technique where he projected his feeling of unease using Aura, hence amplifying it and causing everyone to subconsciously avoid him. The boy was too young to be skilled enough to project an extraneous emotion. Thus, he had to be actually feeling that unease. Now, Artemis was curious about what could possibly drive a Baron’s child up the wall.

Following the boy down the corridors of the train as she kept to the shadows, she finally reached the last compartment of the train, the cargo hold.

The boy looked around nervously, finding no one, he sighed in relief before knocking on the door in a complex pattern.

The door creaked open revealing a group of twenty men emitting a suffocating bloodlust and murderous Aura while occupying a commanding position among them was a muscular man in a dark coat. Slit sacks of rice lay scattered about indicating where they had come from.

As his vision passed over the shadow in which she was hiding, her breath almost hitched as she felt her illusion break as it clashed with a Destiny stronger than her own. A glimpse of his black sclera and pale iris told her all she needed to know, a demonic noble was on the train! One stronger than a Baron and nearing the level of a Viscount. A half-step Demonic Lieutenant in their terms.

The boy entered, closing the door behind him.

In the dim corridor, Artemis sighed in relief and turned around to return to Cyn at the quickest speed and get him off the train.

And froze when a deep male voice resounded behind her.

“’Welcome to my parlour.’ Said the Demon to the spy.”