Dog

Ylfa’s stomach rumbled. Not loud enough for anyone else to hear, but enough to make her wince and curl her tail tighter around her hind legs. She had had enough of this - enough of pretending to be a dog, of bowing her head and padding along like some obedient mutt. She wanted to be herself again. Human, at the very least. Better yet, her true form: a demi-human, a Formy. But none of that mattered unless Jere allowed it. He never asked, never explained, only commanded in silence by the way he moved.

So she waited, ears flat, standing at his side in the vaulted church hall, a loyal shadow to a master who barely acknowledged her. Jere stood motionless, his presence as cold and immovable as the marble pillars around them. They were waiting for orders. That was all.

Her only hope, as the priest approached with his air of sanctity and superiority, was that whatever mission he assigned might let her out into the wild. Maybe she’d get a chance to hunt. She wasn’t picky - rabbit, deer, even scraps would do. She could cook, yes, but what good was that with no fire, no hearth, no freedom to prepare food on her own? Hunger gnawed at her, but underneath it, something sharper burned: hatred.

She despised the priest. Everything about him - his calm smile, his delicate hands folded as if in prayer, his voice that dripped with practiced piety - made her hackles rise. He was one of the very men responsible for the division, the hatred, the blood between humans and demons. She wanted nothing more than to grow to her full wolf form and crush his throat in her jaws. She could picture it vividly. The snap of bone. The silence after.

But she didn’t move. She didn’t dare. Because Jere would kill her for it.

So she sat, four legs planted, ears twitching, and listened as the priest’s honeyed words turned to steel.

“Your task today,” the priest said, voice echoing in the vaulted space, “is to intercept and destroy a band of reinforcements before they reach the battlefield. Once that is done, you are to travel to this forest and eliminate a detachment of imps that has infested it.”

He raised a hand, palm glowing faintly green. A ripple of light passed through the air - Jere’s GPS updated instantly, markers appearing where the priest had indicated.

“When this is done,” the priest added, “you are free for the remainder of the day. Come see me again tomorrow morning.”

Jere nodded once, efficient and wordless. Already, his mind was calculating. Then, without waiting, he turned sharply and strode for the church doors.

Ylfa bolted after him, claws clicking against the polished stone. When they emerged into the sunlight, she caught the shift of his wings beginning to slide open and panic seized her.

“Hey! Don’t leave me here!”

He glanced back at her, face as unreadable as always.
“Why should I take you with me?”

Her ears flattened. She bared her teeth.
“Two reasons. Firstly, I’ll die if you leave me. Secondly, I’m not powerless. Let me help you fight.”

His gaze didn’t flicker.
“Why would you die?”

“Because I’m hungry! If you never let me eat, I’ll starve!”

He considered this a moment, eyes cool and distant.
“And why do you think I need your help to fight?”

She swallowed her frustration. The church doors were still within earshot; someone could hear. She couldn’t afford to shout, but every word felt ready to burst.
“I’m sure you don’t. But I want to be useful in some way!”

For the first time, something shifted in Jere’s expression - not visibly, but deep within the machine precision of his thoughts. A flicker. A question. Purpose. She wanted purpose. She wanted to matter.

For an instant, he felt something alien, a weight pressing at the walls of his chest. Pity.

He had a purpose, after all - one forged in creation, wired into every part of his being since the moment he opened his eyes. She had none. She wandered in his shadow, waiting for scraps of meaning.

His mind recalculated. Paths branched outward. With Ylfa in the equation, the number of possible scenarios multiplied fivefold. Risks rose. Outcomes diverged. But… potential increased too.

He gave the smallest nod.
“Fine. You can come with me. But you’ll need to change form into something I can carry easily.”

She blinked, stunned. She had braced herself for rejection. She had never even let herself imagine he might accept. Her tail wagged furiously as her voice stumbled out.
“W-wait, really? Thank you!”

The words hit him harder than he expected. His heart gave a sudden, heavy beat. He searched for why. Was it the thank you? Had anyone ever thanked him before? His processors said yes. His memory offered nothing.

Ylfa’s body shimmered, shrinking rapidly, fur contracting as her frame compressed. In less than two seconds she was no larger than a rodent. She scampered forward, and Jere crouched, holding his hands open, palms upturned. She leapt onto them, light as a feather.

He rose to full height, opened the pocket stitched into his shirt, and slid her carefully inside. The fabric pressed snug around her tiny form. Secure. She would not fall.

He lifted his gaze skyward, analyzing the atmosphere, charting vectors and speeds in a heartbeat. His wings spread to their full span, black metal shining in the sunlight.

With a single colossal beat, the ground shuddered. Dust swirled. The deep thud of launch rolled through the air. The ion engines ignited, a low hum swelling into a roar as they carried him upward, higher, faster.

Wind whipped against Ylfa’s tiny face. She cowered deeper into his pocket, shielded from the blast, while Jere rose toward the clouds - toward battle.

Ylfa’s curiosity eventually outweighed her fear. Inch by inch, she poked her head out of Jere’s pocket.

The wind struck her like a wall - lashing at her fur, flattening her ears against her head, forcing each breath to fight against the rush of air. It was harsh, almost painful, yet bearable enough to keep her eyes open. And when she did, she nearly gasped.

The world stretched endlessly below. The land rolled by in vast sheets, rivers carving silver lines through the green, forests and hills smudged together like strokes from a painter’s brush. From this height the wilderness seemed distant, delicate, fragile. She’d never seen the world this way before.

The engines howled behind the constant roar of the wind, a wailing chorus that made her paws clutch instinctively at the fabric of Jere’s pocket. But still she couldn’t look away.

How unfair, she thought, that he gets to see this all the time.

She wanted to tell him so, to lean close to his ear and confess her jealousy - but speech here would mean a mouthful of air, and besides, what would be the point? Jere would only ask why. He didn’t care for beauty. In her eyes, he was the perfect soldier: emotionless, obedient, efficient.

And that was what saddened her most. He looked so young - barely into his twenties, if that. Yet he carried himself like a weapon forged and honed, nothing more. She, with her centuries of life, would never have sent one so new to the world straight into war. Not without letting them live first. The thought panged against her instincts, something maternal and protective stirring deep within.

What she didn’t know - what he didn’t know either - was that Jere’s body was not bound by the limits she assumed. The magic that saturated this world had been pressing against him since his arrival, seeping into every part of his system. His processors had been quietly studying it, dissecting its structure. And now, at last, they understood.

The change happened in less than a heartbeat. A flicker. His reactor shifted from its dwindling deuterium-tritium reserves to the raw, invisible current of magic itself, drew a breath of it, then returned to normal fuel - all too quick for Jere to notice. Yet that instant was enough. His systems had learned.

From then on, each inhalation, each steady beat of his reactor, drew in traces of magic. Slowly, imperceptibly, his body began replacing the finite with the infinite. Days would pass before the transformation was complete, but the outcome was certain: Jere would never truly run dry. So long as he lived beneath this sky, the world itself would feed him.

And as he carved through the air with Ylfa pressed warm against his chest, he remained utterly unaware of the miracle - or curse - that had just taken root inside him.

It didn’t take Jere long to locate the reinforcements. A dark line stretched across the open grasslands below - monsters on the march, their ranks steady and unbroken. From his altitude he could identify orcs, imps, goblins, and even a lumbering giant among them. At the column’s head rode a helmeted man on a black horse, the leader guiding his forces toward their destination with grim purpose.

Jere’s processors ran their calculations without pause. Four hundred bodies in total. Too many for a single screaming pass. But there was another way. He rose higher, climbing until he reached the optimal dive height, then settled into a wide, lazy circle. Below, the army marched on, unaware of the predator waiting above.

Ylfa pressed herself against the edge of his pocket to watch. Her chest tightened as she realised what she was about to do. These were her people. Fellow demons. Countrymen she would now be asked to kill. She did not know any of them, not the man in the helm, not the faceless soldiers trudging through the grass, yet sorrow pressed down on her all the same. To betray them was to betray her blood.

And yet she knew there was no going back. She had surrendered to Jere, forfeited her prestige the moment she bent her head, and the demons would never forgive her for it. To them she was already a traitor, a target to be cut down on sight. The collar at her throat was a constant reminder - too tight, always watching, relaying her every movement back to those who had once commanded her. She hated it. She wanted it gone. But she understood: if she was to survive, if she was to remain by Jere’s side, she had to obey. Even if obedience meant slaughtering those she once called her own.

Her stomach twisted, growling faintly with hunger. Her throat was parched. Still, she straightened in silent defiance. If the order came, she would do it. Without hesitation. Without regret.

Jere did not wait. He rolled his body and dove.

The ion engines howled to life, their pitch rising as small vents opened between the interlocking wing plates. The scream of metal cut through the sky, stabbing at Ylfa’s ears until she winced and flattened them against her skull. Wind tore at her fur, whipped across her face, stole the breath from her lungs. The ground rushed up with terrifying speed.

Then, at the last possible instant, Jere leveled out. The plain blurred beneath them, so near that if they had not been hurtling forward at near-sonic velocity, Ylfa could have counted the blades of grass. The world dissolved into motion and noise, her thoughts drowned in the violence of speed.

A new sound rose beneath the roar of air - a deep hum resonating through Jere’s frame. Blue sparks shimmered across his steel wings, crawling like veins of lightning over his body. Ylfa’s eyes widened. She had no name for what she was seeing, no frame of reference for this strange power that danced and multiplied before her.

The enemy column came into view, head-on. From the moment Jere locked eyes on them to the instant of impact, only half a second passed. The horseman at the front had not even begun to comprehend the shadow descending upon him when the world ignited.

In a flash, Jere vanished into a cocoon of searing blue light. A heartbeat later, the light was gone - and so was the army.

Ylfa blinked, stunned. The plain had shifted beneath them, the column no longer ahead but stretched behind in ruin. Jere was already climbing again, banking into a long arc, and only then did she see the truth.

The procession had been split in two. Perfectly. From front to back, every creature was bisected as though the world itself had drawn a blade through their ranks. The giant lay in halves, its enormous body crumpled across the trampled grass. Blood poured freely, dark stains spreading across the field, insides spilling like a cauldron overturned.

Ylfa’s breath caught in her throat. She had seen death before. She had waded through gore, watched comrades and enemies alike torn to pieces. But never like this. Never so sudden. Never so absolute.

It frightened her. It made her stomach twist. Nausea threatened to rise. She pulled herself back into the safety of Jere’s pocket, trembling faintly, forcing her breathing to slow.

Above, the ion engines flared. Jere’s body rose once more into the endless sky.