Yuemith

They were called the Dead Lines. The boundaries of our world, beyond which we couldn't travel. Even if we tried, we would die immediately. The Demon Lord's beasts prowled outside our borders. and they were charged with eliminating any human who attempted to leave the strictly delineated borders of our nation. We could approach them without issue. We could even speak with those dark beasts that were capable of human language, far and few between though they might be.

I didn't understand it. I couldn't understand it. Why give humans any area at all? I doubted the Demon Lord had some special fondness for us, given how readily they had us killed for the high crime of taking one step past the lines.

Dark beasts didn't enter our territory. We had express permission given by the Demon Lord that, should we encounter a dark beast within our territory, we could kill it. It had been given in the form of written declarations to humanity that remained enshrined within each nation's capital. It additionally went on to say that, even if we did not notice or defeat a dark beast that entered our lands, such a beast would be destroyed upon returning to the Demon Lord's territory.

The policy made things even more confusing.

Furthermore, it made the situation before me additionally troubling.

A dark beast stood before me, a mountainous creature somewhere between a cat and a wolf, so incomprehensibly large that it shook my very soul to see it. The world lapsed into a shrill silence that tore at my chest, and I experienced a second of the most blinding pain I’d ever felt. Then it disappeared, leaving only a faint throbbing sensation that radiated throughout my body, odd but not entirely unpleasant.

As I recovered myself, shadows wrapped around the beast, turning it into a writhing mass of pitch black that made me think of bubbling tar. Slowly, it shrank, changing until a new form appeared from within the shadows - a human form. It appeared to be a young woman with shoulder-length black hair, noble features, and golden eyes. I recognized the appearance and wondered what it meant that it had chosen this woman’s form.

The beast held out a piece of paper, the implication that it would explain everything in more detail clear.

I took it with the sense that, by doing so, I was agreeing to some unvoiced contract. I skimmed the words, brows furrowing in consternation with each additional nugget of information gleaned. I might have suspected his identity, but the paper confirmed it. He was one of the four strongest dark beasts and the Warden of the East, Yuemith.

It explained that he was here with special permission from the Demon Lord to 'observe humanity,' but there was no way for me to verify that. How could a mere mage possibly learn whether a signature truly belonged to the Demon Lord? I wasn't a member of the government. I wasn't even a member of any specific town. I was a completely random mage living by myself in the middle of nowhere because I found it difficult to get along with others. Even if he were here with the Demon Lord's permission, it made no sense to send him to me.

"So? Why are you here?" I asked.

Yuemith didn't respond for a moment. When he realized I was staring at him, he eventually pointed to his chest as though surprised I was asking him. Who else would I ask? It certainly wouldn't do me any good to ask the paperwork. At last, he sighed and cleared his throat several times. With each cough, the sound shifted, beginning at a low, rumbling growl of a bass and ending at a tenor far closer to a human’s voice. "You were the first person I encountered," he said.

I pushed the paper back toward him. "Well, I'm not a useful person for this position," I told him. "You need someone with some sort of political power or, at the very least, the ability to introduce you to other people. You can't 'observe humanity' all the way out here in the woods. Why do you need to observe us anyway?"

"Recent skirmishes have demonstrated a problematic level of growth from humanity. I intend to observe and determine whether humanity ought to be allowed to continue to grow and, eventually, get stronger, or whether I should cut your civilization off at the root."

I froze. "By that... you mean..."

"I initially intended to simply destroy humanity, but the Demon Lord insisted that I should observe you first before making such a final decision."

"Why?" I blurted out. "Why would the Demon Lord care one way or another about us?" And of course, this was far too weighty a matter to give to a stranger chosen at random. Why did I move to this place so near the Eastern border? I should have set myself up in the Southern plains or the Western shores instead.

Well, I knew why, but that didn’t make me any happier about the decision now.

"The Demon Lord has always cared excessively for your kind," he said calmly. The way he spoke was too even and steady for a human. It made listening to him unnerving, even when he'd taken the time to modulate his voice into something bearable to human ears. "Despite your excesses, She has always believed you ought to be given additional chances. 'It makes no sense to blame the children for the sins of the parents,' as she says."

None of that made any sense to me. What was he talking about? If the Demon Lord cared so much for humanity, why would - she? - keep us trapped within this small territory? We couldn't even travel outside to see what the rest of the world might be like. "Regardless, you can't do that with me," I repeated.

"I see. Then there is nothing to observe. I shall commence destruction of -"

"Wait, why? I didn't say there weren't humans suited for this! Just that I'm not one of them!"

Yuemith blinked slowly, catlike. "You are the human I found and chose to speak with. I have no desire to seek out further humans and repeat this process. It has been far more arduous than I'd prefer already."

I found myself blinking back, like I always did with the cats that lived nearby. To my surprise, he relaxed some. Perhaps he really was part cat. He was lazy like one, too, I thought. I lived less than a mile from the Dead Line he protected. How arduous could his journey have been? Still, I wasn’t so socially inept as to say that to the being trying to decide whether humans deserved to live. "I don't interact with other humans often," I explained with patience I didn’t feel. "If you follow me, you won't be observing humanity. Just me." Why was he in charge of observing us anyway? It seemed like a strange job to give to someone who found dealing with people 'arduous.'

"All the better. I will have less work to do if it is only one human I must observe."

He wasn't changing his mind. In fact, it was beginning to seem like he'd chosen me precisely because I didn't talk to people. Was he trying to shirk his duties? I gritted my teeth and clenched the paper in my hand. "Fine. You can observe."

His eye twitched. Perhaps he'd been hoping I'd let him kill humanity and go straight home. He mastered himself quickly and bowed his head slightly. "Very well. May I know what name I should call you by?"

I sighed heavily. "Ciel. Ciel Orlen."

I turned around and headed inside without saying anything further, leaving the door open for him. I hoped he'd take that as enough of an invitation to enter so I wouldn't have to actually say the words. It felt like saying it would be more acceptance of his unreasonable demands than I wanted to offer him. Sure enough, after looking around for a moment, he stepped in behind me... though he didn't close the door.

"If you're going to be living in here, you should close the door behind you," I said when it became clear that he had no intention of doing so.

Yuemith turned and glanced at the door, then back at me. "You're the one who left it open, though," he pointed out.

Would it count against humanity if I murdered him? Not that I had any illusions about my ability to do so. A few months ago, the Hero's party had gone up against Yuemith; not a single one had returned. I looked at him as I went to close the door. "What happened to the Hero's party? What about their weapons?"

Yuemith closed his eyes and crossed his arms, looking very deep in thought. At last, he sucked in a breath as though suddenly realizing something. "The idiots with mana-infused weapons!" At my nod, he said, "I killed them. One of them - the one with the black hair - injured me. Humans have become too strong."

"You didn't look injured," I said, more out of sheer contrariness than because I didn't believe him. After all, it had been months ago. Surely he could heal an injury in that length of time.

To my surprise, he smirked. "It was nothing more than a scrape. A simple tear in my epithelial cells. They failed to pierce my soul by even a fraction of a percent. Still, given another few thousand years, humans might become capable of killing Fulsi. She's not as strong as the rest of us."

Fulsi was the Warden of the South and a wind elemental. The fact that Yuemith considered her the weakest of the wardens was interesting. To humans, Yuemith seemed the most accessible, largely because he had a form we could approach. Fulsi and, in the West, Suiren, were both amorphous. Cutting them was impossible because their body could split and come together again as easily as breathing. Hiacine in the North, on the other hand, had a concrete body like Yuemith, but he emitted light that burned those who approached to cinders long before they could touch his form.

"What about you then?" I asked, curious. "How strong are you compared to the others?"

Yuemith hummed. He was examining my cottage, looking in cupboards and under my bed and at my bookshelves as though everything fascinated him. "It would be difficult for me to win against the others without killing them," he said at last. He didn't bother so much as glancing at me as he said it. Instead, he pointed to my bed. "This is where humans sleep, correct?"

"Yeah." I staggered towards it and collapsed into the soft bedding. I'd spent a great deal of time arranging my cottage to my exact preferences, and it bothered me more than I liked to admit to have someone else here poking around at things. "Speaking of, I was sleeping when you came, so I'm gonna get back to that. We can talk more in the morning."

I didn't hear a response, so I let myself relax and start to drift into unconsciousness. If I had any skill, it was my ability to sleep. No one was better at it than me. It had served me well at the University, letting me sleep through lectures and then lectures about sleeping through lectures. I figured I'd be well-served by it again, now that I had a calamity-level dark beast hanging out in my cottage.

Even I wasn't so crazy that I wouldn't wake right up when something landed on the bed beside me, though, given the situation. Perhaps normally, I'd have ignored it, assuming it was a cat or something, but this wasn't a normal situation. I opened my eyes and saw the back of Yuemith's head. I sat up. He appeared to be copying my sleeping position. "Out."

He twisted, looking up at me in curiosity. "Where would you have me sleep, then?"

"I don't care, so long as it isn't in my bed."

He hummed softly to himself, then dissolved. His shadow was all that remained, and I reeled back when it darted toward me, invading my body. I felt the freezing chill of his magic entering my throat, welling up behind my eyes, filling my sinuses. "You can use my bed!" I shouted desperately.

The invasion paused. Then his shadow seeped back out of me. It felt somewhat like having a runny nose, which was all the more disgusting when heaped on top of what he'd just done. Slowly, he reformed his humanoid body. Lisa’s body. She was the Hero's mage. Yuemith had kept his golden eyes instead of her brown ones, but the body otherwise appeared quite similar to the one I remembered seeing at the University. "Why are you in that form?" I asked.

Yuemith looked down at himself. "I thought it fair to honor the one who damaged me by using their form."

"Ah." I didn't have anything further to comment on that. "She was a girl, you know." I couldn't tell if he'd kept that aspect or not. Lisa'd had a flat chest, after all.

Yuemith lay back down and closed his eyes, this time lying flat on his back. "I don't consider that important."

I didn't know whether that meant he'd replicated her sex or not. I supposed it didn't matter. I lay back down as well. "Please don't enter my body like that again without my permission. It feels disgusting."

"I see. I will keep that in mind."

I noted that wasn't the same as agreeing not to do it, but it was the best I was likely to get from this beast. He didn't have any reason to indulge my requests in the first place. In a way, I was lucky that he'd been so reasonable thus far. I confirmed that he was fully removed from my body, then told myself to fall asleep. A second later, darkness claimed me.