Surprise

Morgana’s pulse spiked.

This was bad.

No, this was nightmare fuel.

She stood there in the general’s tent, staring at the map spread across the table. A thick red circle marked the old ruins. Her eyes fixated on the Demon language ran beside it. She couldn’t read a single symbol. Nobody here could. 

But the fact that it was written in "Demon Tongue" was enough to trigger her newly developing anxiety.

That single phrase drilled straight through her calm.

Fuck. Perfect. Of course it’s demon tongue. Of course it points to the ruins where I hatched. Why wouldn’t the universe shove my head into a bonfire today?

She kept her face smooth. She didn’t try to read. She didn’t even get close enough to pretend. She just folded her arms and let Tomas and Borik roll up the parchments while Avric checked the rest of the tent.

Don’t twitch. Don’t stare. Don’t look like you recognize anything. You don’t, because you can’t read it. So breathe, idiot. Breathe.

The panic softened at the edges as her brain did what it always did when fear cracked: it hunted for answers. Why those ruins? Why circle them like a target? What about that place had the demons riled up? 

She’d seen battle plans before, in the movies of course, but not ones that worshipped a single point on a map like it was a shrine.

Tomas finished bundling the papers. Borik grunted and slung the satchel over his shoulder. Avric straightened, sword at his hip, expression set. “Let’s move.”

They pushed out of the tent into the pale afternoon light.

And stopped.

Five figures stood in the open space between the tents and the blackened bonfire pit. Demons.

Two were cloaked mages, one male and one female, staffs humming with violet sparks. Their skin bore a sickly gray tint, cracked as if scorched by flame, with faint embers glowing underneath. 

Their eyes, slitted like a serpent’s, burned with malice, and every twitch of their fingers left trails of smoke in the air.

The other two were fighters, both males clad in jagged, piecemeal armor hammered together from black iron and bone. Horns curled from their brows, crooked and uneven, and their mouths stretched too wide, showing teeth sharpened into points. 

They stank of blood, their aura rolling off them like heat from a forge, daring anyone to come closer.

And at the back, a female, robed in pale fabric that did nothing to hide the sickly violet veins crawling up her neck and face. She resembled a supporter type magic user. 

Her eyes glowed faintly red, unblinking, too calm. She radiated a steady, suffocating aura, the kind that made the air heavier, as though she were anchoring the others with sheer presence.

The whole group seemed to warp the space around them, wrong, poisonous. Evil bled from their bodies like smoke from a fire, thick enough that Morgana felt the hairs on her arms stand on end.

The air shifted. In one heartbeat, everyone reached for weapons.

One of the fighters spat out a string of words, harsh and clipped. Morgana understood every syllable.

“Humans. They got here first. Kill them before they run.”

The male mage snapped back, “No! Capture. Interrogate. We need to know what they found.”

The female mage hissed to the supporter, “Orders?”

Morgana’s face didn’t so much as twitch. She stared, blank, like they were barking nonsense. Avric didn’t react to the tongue at all; he didn’t understand a word. He raised his long sword and took one step forward, steady as an oath.

The supporter lifted a hand. When she spoke, it was calm, in the common tongue. “Humans. This camp... Was the slaughter your work?”

Avric didn’t flinch. “No. But it changes nothing. You’ve crossed into human lands. By order of Everlight’s Radiance, you will not leave this place.”

A soft sigh slipped from the supporter. Then, in demon tongue, simple and tired. “Kill them.”

That was enough.

Morgana moved first.

She had already materialized her scythe the moment they entered the forest. So all she needed to do was to use it.

Moonfang Dash hit like lightning under her skin.

She blurred across the dirt. The male mage had just enough time to widen his eyes. The scythe’s edge kissed air, then flesh, then bone. A clean through. He folded apart in two neat pieces that hadn’t yet realized they were dead.

Then everything broke loose.

Avric met one fighter head-on, blade ringing against jagged steel with a spray of sparks. Borik slammed his shield into the female mage, absorbing a splintering burst of black flame with a grunt and a curse. Tomas planted himself behind Borik, hands already glowing, prayer spilling under his breath.

Morgana swung, pivoted, cut, and kept part of herself on a leash. She could go faster. She could hit harder. She could end this in a heartbeat if she let the darkness run.

But that would be stupid. That would biring questions that she does not wish to answer. That would be the kind of attention she didn’t want.

So she fought like a very talented human.

The second fighter lunged, blade scything for her throat. She slipped under it, turned, and hooked the scythe’s heel around his ankle. A savage yank. He lost balance. She finished him with a short, brutal cut that opened him from collarbone to hip. Hot blood spattered her boots and the cuff of her sleeve.

No guilt. No shame. Not even a tremor of hesitation.

They’re demons, she told herself as she killed a third foe. I’m… what I am. None of that should matter. But it should feel like something. It doesn’t. What does that say about me?

The female mage, gaining enough room to move after pushing Borik back, tried to pin her with a web of shadow that crawled like oil. Morgana slammed her scythe across it and chopped the net apart, then closed the gap with a hard leap. 

The mage threw up a warding circle, but it was too slow. Morgana batted the staff aside with the haft and cracked the flat of her blade against the woman’s jaw. Bone popped. Teeth flew. The mage hit the ground in a spray of dirt.

Avric shouted, his sword flaring as a prayer took hold, golden light flensing a demon’s shield to nothing. He drove the fighter back foot by foot, jaw clenched, breath ragged, armor slick with red. The man fell to a knee. Avric’s blade came down and didn’t stop.

On the other side, Borik had taken a glancing hit to the ribs. He staggered, stood hunched, one hand pressed to his side, face pale under the beard. 

Tomas’ hands pressed into the crack in Borik’s armor, a wash of healing pushing blood back into vein and life back into skin. “Hold still,” he breathed. “Hold still you bumbling baffoon.” 

The supporter hung at the edge of the chaos. She noticed that all four of her companions have been eliminated. So she started to cast a spell on herself.

Noticing this, Tomas called out to Avric and Morgana, "She is trying to get away!"

Morgana tracked the rhythm of the chanting, picked her moment, and bolted.

The woman saw her coming and stopped what she was doing. She raised a shimmering shield in hopes to stop Morgana's deadly scythe, but watched it splinter under the deadly weapon like frost under a hammer. 

Morgana pivoted and slammed the butt of the weapon into the woman’s midsection. Air whoofed out. The supporter crumpled. Morgana set her boot on the demon’s sternum and pressed her blade to her throat.

“Stay,” Morgana said, voice flat.

Silence fell in ragged pieces.

Bodies slumped to the dirt. Blood soaked the ground. The smell of iron and spent magic burned the air.

Avric planted his sword in the ground and leaned against it. His shoulders were lifting and falling as he tried to catch his breath. Red streaked the plates of his armor, and sweat slicked his temples, but his eyes were clear.

Borik was getting healed by Tomas at the side while Morgana looked completely calm and relaxed. The only thing that bothered her was the mess drying on her sleeve. However, her mind was a different battlefield on its own.

I just killed demons like I was slicing bread, she thought. No hitch. No second thoughts. I don’t even feel the need to explain it to myself. That should scare me.

The supporter glared up at her with bright, bitter eyes. “Human,” the demon hissed in common tongue. “You are efficient.”

Morgana pressed a little harder with her boot. “Don’t move.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Avric take a slow step closer, sword still out. “Alive,” he said. “We take her alive.”

"Figured you would say that." Morgana commented, not arguing with the decision. 

Afterall, she could provide her with the answers she is personally seeking...