Dirt flew from her shovel to land in the growing pile as Anna and her village worked at digging at the site which might become a quarry. She was the tallest girl in the village, having reached a height of a hundred and eighty centimetres, and yet the pit they had dug was already deep enough that she couldn’t see the surrounding grasslands from within it. The soil had been moist for about half a metre and there wasn’t a single worker who wasn’t caked in mud; Anna’s own light brown hair had turned an ochre red. Everyone in the village had, at the very least, worked their own personal crops so there wasn’t anyone amongst them who was unfamiliar with the job, but only the miners had ever spent whole days digging. She was a blacksmith’s daughter and had helped in the forge sine she was strong enough to just work the bellows, but even her endurance couldn’t last many more days like this.

Three weeks prior some of the village’s youngsters had been playing in the grasslands, trying to find their arts and pretending to slay dragons, when one of them tripped over a rock that had been unearthed the wet season past. When they took the stone to the healing lady, to make sure it didn’t have any wrongness that might harm the kid, she recognised that what they found was a piece of Lord’s Stone. As is the law, she reported the discovery with a messenger bird, and two weeks later a Lord arrived in their town. With his authority, he commanded that all able-bodied workers begin work digging up the site. Since the Lord managed to arrive in their town so quickly on foot, he would have had to have been in the nearest neighbouring town, that was built on the Atawa-Kawa river. He seemed to believe that the Lord’s Stone was evidence that a quarry was buried beneath the grasslands, and that he could enrich himself with the contents. While he was a Lord, he did not seem to be a Lord Magus, and it was possible that they could have stood against him if they worked together but doing that would make them a target for Lords more generally and their thirty-person town couldn’t survive that. A single Lord Magus could kill them all by waving their hand.

Thus, they had been digging away a hill for a week and not tending their fields or animals in that time. The week that they spent working there had consumed a week’s worth of winter supplies, and they would have to work even harder to regain what was lost just to make it through the cold alive. The Lord didn’t care about that. When the chief tried to ask him for them to have some time off, the Lord became furious and used his Sacred Armament to take the chief’s head off. After that, even the children were made to work; making up for the work that the chief would have done. She had learnt from a traveling Priest of Ren that Sacred Armaments, also known as Sacrams, were the weapons that the Lords used to drive back the demons; it felt like blasphemy to use one to murder.

She distracted herself with thoughts of how they got there to make the work pass faster when someone yelled out. “I found more Lord’s Stone,” and the area they focused on shank again. Concentrating on a much smaller circle, they dug another half metre again by nightfall.

As she stumbled home and collapsed immediately into the cleaning room, laying on the floor as the recited the Payer of Ren to get the water stone to poor water over her to remove the dirt. It was dangerous to do that laying down, but she was too tired and sore to stand. Laying there on the ground she stripped of her muddy clothes and let the water rinse them. She rolled onto her back to let the water clean her front and after a few moments felt recovered enough to at least sit up. Reciting the payer once more, she used a towel to dry herself off and walked to her room draped in the towel find dry clothes. Her father was one of the only people not working in the dig site, but that was because the Lord had him working on everyone’s tools the whole time. His job was no easier than anyone else’s, and he was asleep at the table when she walked in. Lord’s Stone was a very useful building material and could make houses and roads that could last generations without repairs, but it could also be processed into Lord’s Steel, a metal that was both stronger and lighter than ordinary steel. That processing was very labour intensive and even one ingot took most of a morning to make. The Lord ordered that the tools be coated in Lord’s Steel to speed up the digging, so every bit of Lord’s Stone they found had to be processed.

Anna left her father to sleep and went the cellar to fetch some dried meat to throw in a soup with the now wilting vegetables she pulled from their yard. With the work they were doing, not having a hearty meal would surely lead to falling over during the day. Many years prior, a Lord had come along with the tax collector and noticed her mother. He had claimed that she had the Art and with cultivation could become a Lord Magus. When he said Anna didn’t have the Art in her, they were separated. As Anna grew older, she came to understand that the Lord had most likely lied, and her mother was now either some lord’s concubine or dead. It was something of common knowledge in the village. Knowing that, she looked after her father in her mother’s place. When the soup was ready, she gently woke him up and had him eat. His movements were slow and pained, the constant effort seemed to have aged him two decades in a week. That was something of a common condition in the village.

The following day, the situation radically changed.

Mid-morning, the sound of metal striking metal filled the tired ears of the workers. They uncovered a wide metal structure beneath the ground; the quarry was finally found. That day they weren’t even granted a midday break as the Lord demanded they find the entrance. That afternoon, with four ours left until sundown, the entrance was found and opened. Completely stale air burst out with the opening of the metal door. Peering into the dark room within, they could see a ten metre by thirty metre room, decorated with mysterious pieces of art along all the walls. The bulk of the room’s centre was made up of rainbow glowing pillars that were connected to each other with smooth, colourful ropes. Behind them, the Lord had drawn his Sacram and was wordlessly directing them to enter with a shooing gesture. Anna could only imagine that the quarry wasn’t safe, since the Lord was ensuing the honour of being the first inside to them.

They lit touches and went inside, the fresh air of the grasslands doing little for the quarry’s stillness and the animal fat they coated the touches blended into a foul stench. They spread out as they moved through the room, letting their fire light defuse evenly. She immediately noticed how clean the room was; dust free even after centuries underground. That made her feel a little self-conscious about dirty footprints her bear feet were leaving. Some of the other’s started to open cupboards and chests, but she was instead drawn towards the pillar in the centre of the room. Unlike the other pillars, which were rectangular and connected, this one was circular and isolated. It was a pure black colour that seemed to draw the fire’s light into it, as if it was a shadow made manifest. The effect was almost hypnotics, both pushing her eyes away but drawing them in. She had never seen something so smooth. It curved so cleanly that it appeared flat, but for her own movement revealing otherwise. Before she even knew what she was doing, she had her hand up against it. It was cold to the touch, as if it was drawing the heat from her body.

It was then that she heard the clicking sound of the Sacram being made ready to fire. She stiffened and slowly turned to face the Lord. His black, full-body armour seemed ominous in the fire light, even beneath the simple white tabard of the Order of Ren’s Knights. The black weapon in his hand was raised to head height as it let out a thunderous roar, and a blinding flash within the dark room. The armament did its fearful purpose and the men who opened a chest were flung back into the wall, the small crate they were holding skidding across the smooth surface towards her. Not knowing why, but following her instincts, she picked up the crate and ducked behind the pillar as the thunder once again struck out and more of her fellow villagers went down, their blood coating the metal red.

With he back against the pillar, she could hear the Lord approaching. Her heart was a drum sending waves through her body. She suddenly fell backwards, as if the pillar was never there. Falling on her arse, she could see a door close silently where she had been leaning. She was inside the black pillar, yet she could see out of it as if it were just the faintest of fog between her and the Lord. As he looked throughout the room, he seemed to be speaking but she couldn’t hear anything other than her own shaken breathing. It was then that she realised that she wasn’t alone in that small room.

Attached to the wall behind her was the most beautiful girl she had ever seen. Her skin was as pure as a new season cloud and her hair was as black as the pillar. She was small and naked, and seemed to be as delicate as a flower. She reminded Anna of the Azure demons from the fairy tales her mother used to tell her. The demon would approach the prince, as it was always a prince, with the appearance of a beautiful woman or a small child. The prince would do the demon a favour and the demon would grant the prince’s wish, twisting what they wanted into something they didn’t. The version that came to her mind was the one where the prince found the Azure demon poisoned and trapped by a hunter’s trap. The prince lifted her sleeping body from the trap and sucked the poison from her body with a kiss. The demon was genuinely in danger then, and not just fooling the prince, and as such devoted herself to granting the wish without twisting it. In the end, the wish is still twisted, and the demon scorned, but Anna felt the demon was sympathetic and the prince more to blame.

She once again felt her instincts pull at her, as if triggered by the memory, and she leaned into the sleeping girl, bound in shackles against the wall. Anna kissed her demon, deeply invading the mouth as if to claim it as her own. It was her first kiss despite her being at an age where she could have been onto her third child, and she felt clumsy in her new-found passion. The demon was entirely cold and unresponsive at first, not like the dead but rather like someone sleeping in winter, but as the kiss went on she stated to warm up and respond to her. When her breath was faint and the pain in her chest started to be more physical than emotional, she broke away from the kiss to find the demon’s cute black eye’s looking back at her. Lost for words and embarrassed over what she had done, she just stared into those eye’s, locked on them like treasures.

“May I register you as the new OO, in light of operation clock running over without reinstatement message being received? Note that full access to legion functionality and records will not be made available without system recognition.” Her voice was every bit as intoxicating as her eyes, as every word is her nonsensical sentence was a song sung just for her.

“Um… yes?” Anna replied. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the words as she was caught up in a daze. She none the less felt that was a safer response.

“Registration confirmed. DNA signature sample has been filed. I will now begin the elimination of the armed hostile.”

With that, the demon’s restraints snapped open and disappeared into the wall. She gracefully bent her body forward an picked up the crate. The locks opened with just a brush of her hand and the contents were revealed; a silver Sacram. It was about twice as large as the one the Lord used and was almost comical in the hands of the demon. Despite the weight, the demon held it completely steady as she inserted its food and made it click. She stood by the door with the armament pointing upward, seemingly waiting for the right moment. The Lord had apparently given up finding her and was loading the contents of the cupboards into a sack. His armament was on the ground near him and the demon opened the door when he stood up to grab a crate on a high shelf.

She bolted directly forward without making a sound and used a pillar as a spring to change direction and charge at the Lord. When the Lord heard Anna make a small marvelled gasp at the demon’s speed, he turned towards her and reached down for his armament. He hadn’t seen the demon, and she approached him while his focus was on Anna, reaching him as he got his armament raised. Her free hand grabbed the Lord’s outstretched arm and pulled it away from Anna as her hand with the armament swung the armament down on the Lord’s exposed head. A sickening crunch sounded, and blood dripped from the base of the demon’s weapon. The demon calmly pulled the base of the weapon out, looked it over and put it back in, apparently checking to see if the Sacram was undamaged.

The demon then turned to her with a smile that seemed to embody all that was good in the world and spoke with her voice that was sweeter than all the birds of the forest.

“OO, please register your name no that the danger has past.”

The way she asked it was strange, but Anna knew that she was asking her name.

“I’m Anna, Anna Daisy’s Daughter. What about you? Do demon’s even have names?”

The question seemed to take a moment to register, though she thought she saw the demon’s eyes go blue for the slightest moment. As she replied, she started to move ever closer to Anna.

“I don’t have a personal designation, if you find that inconvenient you may register one. Otherwise I am just legion.” Her small body seemed to be filled with pride as she mentioned the term legion. Or maybe it was a name? Anna knew it was a military term, something like another word for an army, and she knew the traveling priest had called the collection of demons by that name. Anna could only interpret it as the equivalent of a heritage name.

“Then, how about Azure, Azure Legion?”

She felt silly proposing that name. It was like naming a dog “Dog”, but she had never been good at naming things. None the less the Demon gave a warm smile and nodded with certainty.

“Understood. I’m Azure Legion, I hope to get along with you, Anna Daisy’s Daughter.”