The towering multihued yellow Demon Thorn of Pain never even seemed to realize it was in trouble.

It fired more Minute Thorns at Serenity, but after about a minute it seemed convinced it had shot him enough times and came closer to Serenity. It stuck out one of its leaves again, but this time it wrapped it around Serenity, picking him up.

Serenity flailed, trying to get free. He knew the demon was dying, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be picked up by it.

He failed. He might well have been strong enough but he simply didn’t have the coordination in his new form to take advantage of it.

The gigantic Thorn Demon pulled him to its central body, setting him in the area where the leaves joined to the trunk. It was tall enough that there was plenty of room for Serenity as long as the leaf held itself stiffly in a cup shape to hold him in place.

Serenity lay there grateful nothing else unexpected was happening while the creature died. Once he was certain it was dead, he rolled off its body, pushed himself to his feet, and hurried away.

A day later, a chimera turned to look back at the ruined city he had left hours before. From the top of a hill, he could see only two colorful pointed towers distorting the remaining skyline.

The disguise worked; he’d only had one fight and even then nothing else joined in. He was still not certain it had been worth it. It’d definitely saved time but he’d hated the experience. He simply hadn’t realized how unpleasant it was until he shifted back to his chimera form and realized just how much pain he’d been in.

He was never using that form again.

Ever.

At least, not unless he had to.

The space between the cities was inhabited by both demons and demon beasts, but they were spread well apart and overall they were pretty weak. Serenity didn’t know what was attracting the demons to the cities, but at least it made the countryside easier to deal with.

Maybe he should investigate? It would be a delay but it would give him warning for what might be going on in Mornmoth. Serenity wasn’t certain where to look; he hadn’t seen or felt anything out of place in the mystery city.

There had to be some reason they were clustering in cities. Maybe he should try to find a demon capable of speech? The Thorn Demons weren’t, but some demons were.

The next city Serenity reached was on his map. It was larger than the map showed but at least it wasn’t unexpected. Unlike the first city, however, it wasn’t in ruins. It was obviously damaged and the damage was old, but some of it had been repaired.

The walls in particular were in better shape than the rest of the city.

As Serenity frew closer, he decided that they weren’t simply in better shape; the walls were newer than the rest of the city. They also were far less well built originally even though they were clearly maintained.

There was a gate in the wall; it was open, allowing a few demons to pass in and out. Serenity watched for a while before he headed over to the gate; what there was of a road was little more than an overgrown path made of rubble and all of the demons seemed to avoid it.

There weren’t many demons entering the city, but the procedure seemed to be simple. You walked up to the wall, stopped in front of the gate, a guard walked up to you, and you were allowed into the city. Serenity decided to try in his chimera form; he wanted to know if he could pass in this city even though he couldn’t in the previous one.

Trying at the gate would give him a better chance to run if he had to, and while it would cost time he could swing wide around the city.

Serenity stopped at the entrance and looked around. The gate led into a tunnel through the wall rather than directly into the city. At the far end of the tunnel, Serenity could see the city, but his attention was drawn instead to a triad of mana-rich stones set into the ground near where he was standing. One of them glowed fairly strongly with a riotous mix of colors while another glowed dimly, a faint red; the third was unlit. It looked like some form of detection being used on people entering the gate, but the stones were unlabeled. Serenity assumed that was deliberate.

“Can you understand me, mixed-blood?” A guard approached from the opposite side. He spoke a distorted, accented form of Aeon; it was probably as good as he could speak, since his mouth had far too many teeth and they were far too long to let him close it properly.

The guard was about a foot taller than Serenity, bipedal and covered in patchy fur with jagged teeth sewn onto his armor to match the ones protruding from his mouth. If Serenity hadn’t already known he was a demon, he might have thought the guard was a wolfman with excessive dentition, but serenity suspect that he was instead a demon with some sort of link to consumption.

“Yes.” It was better to keep answers short but accurate when dealing with gate guards. Serenity wasn’t certain why he was being called a “mixed blood”, but if it meant he was being accepted as someone who at least sort of belonged it was fine.

“Good. Don’t start trouble you can’t finish. Leave the workers alone. They all belong to someone who matters. If you hurt them, you’ll be replacing them. Now get out of my sight.” The gate guard waved Serenity forward.

As a welcome to a city went, it wasn’t a bad one. It actually gave some idea of what to watch out for; if it hadn’t been for the guard’s tone, he’d have taken it as well meaning advice.

Maybe it was, but Serenity thought it was more likely that it was taunting the newcomer with his lack of status. Serenity didn’t care about that; he didn’t need status as long as he could get out of the city again on the opposite side.

Once he was through the tunnel, Serenity was finally able to see the city itself. It was a patchwork of buildings, ruins, and fields. In fact, most of the city he could see was fields; he recognized many of the animals as demon beasts, but the majority were ordinary animals.

They were being tended by demons, but as Serenity got closer he realized that the demons tending the animals didn’t look like the rest of the demons. They looked more like distorted humans, anything from a stretched out person to a fat lump of flesh with humanlike features when it moved. None of them had any features that seemed directly combat-focused like claws, sharp teeth, horns, or even a thick hide. The demons who weren’t tending animals all had at least one of those features, and it was usually emphasized by their choice of gear.

Was that why the gate guard called Serenity a mixed blood, because he had a human face but scales, wings, and claws? That seemed to make some sense.

Serenity set off in the direction he wanted, avoiding the fields but taking the most direct route that seemed to go in the right direction.

Serenity’s trip through the city wasn’t without incident; he’d have stories to tell when he got to Rissa of the goat that treed a demon (one of the fighting type, in fact!) and the group of singing demons. At least, he thought they were singing; it was possible that they were fighting with sound instead.

He probably wouldn’t tell her about the three times he had to fight off a demon or the one he’d seen chasing a cat. Those stories wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. He might mention the four demons that tried to trap him in a dead-end alley, but it was probably better avoided as well. Serenity really wanted to wash his claws; he didn’t know where those demons had been, but wherever it was, it was nasty.

He did have to spend a couple of nights hidden in temporary safe spots he created. Serenity blessed the forethought he’d had to practice his Call on the Rift Skill to make the material to protect his sleep. What he made wasn’t a great match for what surrounded it, but he could manage something that looked enough like useless rubble to fool someone who didn’t know the area well.

One thing he wasn’t able to manage was to ask anyone why demons were gathering in cities. For this city, it was obvious: they needed to defend the workers. That didn’t explain the city he’d found earlier. At least, it didn’t explain it unless the Demon Thorns had attacked a settled city like the one he was now in, then stayed because there was an abundance of prey.

There wasn’t an exit exactly where he wanted to leave, but it only took about an hour to find one. The city wall must be studded with these passageways; otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to see one when the city first came into sight and then found another when he was ready to leave.

Leaving was easier than entering; the guards didn’t bother to stop him at all.

This side of the city was less barren; there were more demon beasts and fewer ordinary animals. That definitely explained why the city he’d just left had a wall and guarded the gates; the farms inside the city wouldn’t survive if this many demon beasts attacked, even if it was ordinary hunger. They were simply too vulnerable.

The wall wouldn’t have done much against a properly Skilled army, but against individual creatures it was probably enough.

Over the next two days, Serenity repeatedly had to deal with demon beasts that wanted to have him for lunch, dinner, or simply a morning snack. He happily gave them all permanent mana-based indigestion and moved on.

The only one he tried to salvage any meat from was a demon boar, and he found that it tasted wrong. He could taste the mana, but it carried a disgusting flavor with it. After that, he ignored the meat. He had enough rations to get through and he wasn’t about to eat something that made used socks smell edible in comparison if he didn’t have to.

The next city Serenity found was also larger than the map indicated. Serenity was beginning to really wonder about the map; Duke Lowpeak had said it was used for the evacuation. Shouldn’t it have been fairly accurate and up to date?

As Serenity got closer, what he’d taken as a haze in the distance resolved itself to movement around the city. There was no wall; instead, there were hordes of bugs with brownish heads and translucent bodies. They had to be at least man-sized to be visible at that distance.

Serenity spent several minutes just staring at the mass of gigantic demon insects. Was the city really full of demon termites?

The form does not exactly match the standard termite.

Can you think of anything that is closer?

I did not download a complete entomological reference before we left Earth.

That’s a no, then.

Serenity found himself grinning at the exchange with Aide. It was just what he needed to relax himself.