“Hey, Ary? Can you do me a favour and uhm...” Xellie paused as she searched for the words she needed to not hurt Ary’s feelings. “I uhh... I need to be alone for a bit, if you don’t mind.... You can explore the villa if you like?”

“Are you sure?” Ary shuffled uncomfortably. “I don’t think you should be alone after what just happ...”

Ary stopped herself, her eyes widening as she seemed to have a realization.

“Never mind me! I’ll go explore your villa!” she exclaimed, running off through the door.

Xellie let out a deflated sigh as she ambled across the yard to look in through one of the villa’s shuttered windows.

The window looked in upon her father’s study, untouched as if someone had only been working there hours ago. Papers lay scattered across the desk, an ink spill in place with its ink bottle.

Her attention wandered to the floor, the location of her father’s last moments.

Staring down at the tiles, she was sure she could still see bloodstains, despite the fact that it had been more than 15 years.

“RAYE!” She yelled, turning away from the study window and slamming the shutters. “Raye! Where are you!?”

“You’d do well to calm down.” Raye’s voice floated through the air as she materialized in the yard. “Mattos will soon come around.”

“Where WERE you?” Xellie demanded of Raye. “Where?”

“Ash’s forcefield... oh...” Raye cast her eyes aside. “You mean when your father died.”

Xellie nodded, fiercely wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

“I sat, on that floor.... all night. I called for you. I called and called. You never came...”

“I heard you calling but it was too late, they took me away.” Raye’s voice quivered with emotion. She bit her lip, her face returning to the usual steely gaze. “We shall not relive this now.”

“Fine.” Xellie huffed, dissatisfied with the answer. At some point, she would get the full story from Raye, but she assumed if pressed for information now, Raye would just vanish. “Do you know where Mattos is?”

“He’s on the northern city limits. But he seems unaware of how dangerous the desert is.”

“I better go after him.” Xellie gulped, the added petulantly. “You told me to tell him and look what happened.”

“Have a little faith.” Raye sighed. “Let me see the other reason you called me here.”

“We found a book, it’s in some weird language though. I think it shows demonic portals?” Xellie pulled the book from her waistband and handed it to Raye.

“This is from the Devil’s library?” Raye asked, raising an eyebrow. “This may be unnecessary, but stay away from that place and away from Ash. Hmm... This isn’t technically a map of portals, it’s a map of summonings. Most of the time summonings and portals go hand in hand, but that is not always the case.”

“What’s wrong with Ash?”

“A wizard who owns the Devil’s library and runs magical barriers keeping Valkyries out. What do you assume is wrong with Ash?” Raye shot back.

“Is he a demon?!” Xellie asked in surprise.

“Not exactly, but he is deeply tied to them. Please avoid spending time near him.” Raye replied in admonishment. “I cannot translate this for you.” She added, handing the book back.

“Cannot... or will not?” Xellie asked slyly.

Raye rolled her eyes in response and then vanished.

“Useful,” Xellie muttered, flicking through the book as if she would suddenly understand the strange language it was written in.

Xellie wandered further into the yard and began reminiscing about times that her brother would teach her swordplay. The trees in the yard were tall but wilted and the pond was little more than a sad puddle.

She sat on the bench and idly wondered when the last time was that it had rained in Anshara, trying to keep her attention from wandering back to thinking about the last night she had seen her parents.

Life had been so much simpler back then, at least for her. Her father paid for a private tutor to teach her to read and write to prepare her to train as a priestess. Xellie’s parents could afford such things, her father was a fighter who would often help stave off demonic incursions into Anshara - which were a fairly regular occurrence.

“Are you alright?” Ary called from one of the upper windows.

“Did you watch the whole time?” Xellie scrunched up her face looking up at Ary.

“Her armour is very pretty,” Ary said. “She waved and nodded at me.”

“...of course she did.”

Xellie looked across the yard to locate the sun. There wasn’t going to be much more daylight in the day, so if she planned to search for Mattos, it best be soon.

“Ary, I need you to pull down all the shutters in the house on the inside. I’m going to go looking for Mattos, but you need to stay here in case he comes back... I might be gone for a while, but don’t panic.”

“Got it!” Ary bobbed down below the window before poking her head back up. “Stay safe!”

Taking her scarf, she wrapped it securely across her nose and mouth, then pulled the loose parts up over her head to cover her hair.

As she walked to the inner city wall, she found herself checking she had her sword repeatedly, along with her spare dagger at her waist. Xellie didn’t take the desert lightly.

The first city wall wasn’t far from the villa, just slightly over to the west. Beyond that lay an expanse of razed houses, rocks and sand, leading to the second, taller wall.

It wasn’t uncommon for fighters from the city to go out into the desert as the sun was setting to find creatures to hone their combat abilities against, so the guards waved her through unconcerned.

The wind was starting to pick up, buffeting her with a faceful of sand, prompting her to pull the top part of her scarf down to protect her eyes between gusts.

Visibility was falling fast, she could only see a short distance away, at best.

“MATTOS!” She called, her muffled voice carried pitifully away by the wind.

Shouting in this weather was hopeless. She looked back toward the city walls, then made the decision to walk out just a little further to see if she could see him.

Trudging through the sand was a tiring process. The desert gently sloped upward into dunes, the soft angle making them look deceptively much easier to climb than they really were. Along the top ridge of the dunes, between flurries of sand, Xellie noticed a moving bulge against the smooth surface.

“Ugh.” she muttered, drawing the sword and twisting its energy blade into life. “Let’s get this over with.”

The lump of sand grew, twisting and churning until it took on the form of a man, the sand constantly pulsating as if it were dripping to the ground.

“So disgusting.” Xellie sounded almost bored with the situation, eyeing the long sand tendrils that reached out toward her from the base of the sandman. As the tendrils reached up to wrap around her leg, Xellie simply sidestepped and swatted it away with the energy blade. The tendril exploded violently sending sand toward her face.

“Okay, I’m done with you already.” She told the sandman crossly as she wiped the sand from her eyes and charged toward it. Intending to jump into the air and bring the sword down on the sandman didn’t quite work out as she had hoped, sand was a difficult medium to jump from, so she settled for stumbling toward it, then slashing the sword sideways through the sand demon.

Much like the tendril, the man-shaped sand formation exploded in a puff of sand, and then Xellie drove her sword into the ground repeatedly just to make sure it was really dead.

A black mist was creeping along the ground, demonic miasma.

“One of those days huh?” Xellie mused, stepping back from the miasma, hoping that Mattos wasn’t too far away.

Where there was miasma there were usually multiple demons, so it seemed that the sandman wasn’t going to be the only problem. If she stayed out here, it was going to get dangerous fast.

Hopefully, Mattos was safely inside the city somewhere, whatever the case, she wouldn’t be able to find him in the desert, so she turned back toward the city and began trudging down the dune.

Suddenly, the sand beside her exploded, exposing a puddle of molten glass where the sand had melted when the dust cloud cleared.

“What the...?” Xellie spun around to face back up the dune, where she saw a figure wearing a short cape through the dust. “Who are you?!” She yelled.

The figure was female, with long hair and long horn-like protrusions from the top of her head. She walked down the dune purposefully until she was fully visible.

The thigh-length embroidered icy blue tunic, knee-high white boots and short navy cape were unmistakable.

Xellie’s blood ran cold as she recognised the woman, who stood with her head tilted back slightly, confidently looking down her nose.

Xellie grabbed her scarf and pulled it down in shock so she could call out, forgetting that she’d be eating sand the moment she opened her mouth.