A Weary Traveler's Rest

Xander stood in a narrow alley, two stone buildings hemming him in so much it was as though he were in a cave. He knocked on the door carefully: two raps, a long pause, three more raps in quick succession, and the entrance clacked open.

He walked right in—the door had opened on its own, powered by a mysterious mechanism, and the shopkeeper looked up from behind the counter. Sherry was short and red-haired, with a cherubic face and a long, loose cloak. She also had horns: the reason she was so good at alchemy, after all, was that she was an imp.

“More chemicals for photomancy?”

“Something like that. You still stock poisons, right? I’m going on an expedition.”

“Yeah…” The shopkeeper yawned. “Though business is slow. Most adventurers go to the Capital nowadays, since the rewards here aren’t worth the trouble… maybe I’ll go into brewing instead.”

Xander ignored her complaints and examined the poisons. He popped open the nearest vial and moved to sniff it, but before he knew it, the shopkeeper had flicked his forehead.

“These aren’t art supplies! If you treat this stuff casually, you could die!” Sherry said, glaring. “Did a client wrong you? Are you really going adventuring?”

She closed her eyes and sniffed, nose twitching before speaking slowly.

“I see… I understand… you’ve gotten mixed up with an angel, haven’t you?” Sherry observed. She gave a sloppy impression, but when it came down to it, she really was a divine being, with all the power that came with it.

“Yeah.”

“Hmm. I guess it is around that time. I’ll just give you my best stock and be done with it; I’m closing down soon, anyway.”

“Pardon?”

“Here, here,” Sherry said, giving him a vial. “This is the 200-Year Poison. If a person drinks even a drop, then they’ll be knocked out for 200 years. And this,” she continued, producing a disgusting beaker, “is the 200-Year Elixir. It has a ‘healing power’ of 200 years, but once you drink it, you can’t see anything holy. So if you believe in a god, forget about it.”

“Where am I going to get my supplies from now on? Are you really leaving so casually?”

“Have you ever wondered why a dragon rests under the city in the first place? ‘If the monster ever rises, the city will soon decay’,” the imp alchemist quoted. “Without the mana of a powerful creature underneath it, this towering city will start to crumble from the top down; it’s a punishment for the poor beast.”

“Crumble!?”

“Whether the city crumbles or not, it doesn’t matter to me: I’m closing shop. But I prefer Allider fading in a few years over everyone being burned in one crazy day…” She yawned again, looking down at her book. “Either way, just give me a good story, and I’ll consider the loan repaid.”

***

Once her wings had blossomed, Xander could no longer stop Azrael’s descent. Emotionally, he could only plead with her to wait one extra day, and physically, when he’d refused to open the church’s hidden passage, her hand glowed gold and the passage unsealed anyway: her magic had returned.

They walked down, down, down that spiral staircase… through cobwebs and dust and soot. Then down, down some more… without clocks, without daylight, with no sense of progress except for the sweat and the strain. Azrael led the way with quick, short strides and a glowing halo that vanquished the dark. The soot grew denser and denser until it was as though they were walking through sand, yet this too gave way in front of her.

Finally they arrived at what seemed to be an ancient sewer, with runes coating the walls and an indent in the stone flooring where water used to flow. Moans and groans echoed above, perhaps from dwellers of the Abyss; after plowing forward for some minutes, and a snap from Azrael that blasted the dust away like gunpowder, they saw the beast deep in the tunnel, sleeping.

The dragon was a "dragon" in that it breathed flames, had wings, and possessed green reptilian scales, though it was there, in Xander’s mind, that the similarities ended. Its body was large enough to fill the tunnel like an enormous cork, its slithering length long enough to seem endless; rather than two broad wings, it had many fluttering pairs, like a centipede upside-down. Its deep, growling, fiery breaths were filled with a malice that made Xander’s blood run cold.

A trail of bones led to the dragon’s mouth, converging into a precarious heap. While most of the bones were bleached yellow, some were still disturbingly white.

Xander really did hate Allider.

What kind of city was founded by feeding people to some ravenous snake? That trapped peasants close to that beast while the nobles looked down from far above. If it were up to him, he’d leave the dragon here so the city would be destroyed, and if it were only him, he’d drink the 200-Year Elixir and walk back up the stairs.

But Azrael was there also.

He felt the poison vial, wondering what would happen if he threw it at the monster. The angel’s footsteps echoed as she approached the slumbering beast instead.

“You’ve been here for too long,” she said, touching the side of the dragon’s massive mouth.

“Azrael!”

“Wyrmbeast, Corpse Eater. I remember you. The price of magic I have to pay really is a pain,” Azrael sighed. She conjured a silver sword. It was so small in the face of the beast that it was as though it were a toothpick, but she closed her eyes and its blade turned to gold. “Xander, I’m grateful you showed me the nicer places in the city. I get the feeling if I hadn’t met you, I might not have had the strength to finish my mission.”

Xander couldn’t bring himself to speak.

“Saying thanks like this is embarrassing, but…” She raised her sword, and there was a thunderclap, even before it pierced the flesh. “I don’t think I’ll have another chance.”

Then the underground was awash in light, divine and pure. Xander ran toward where he’d last seen her even before this light had faded away.

The price of magic! That thought compelled him to sprint. If Xander had used his photomancy to create a flash as strong as that, he would have snuffed his candle out. For a slight girl like her… he fumbled for the 200-Year Elixir, and though he wasn’t sure if it would work on an angel, he at least had to try. He reached for Azrael…

His hands met empty air. Even further in, near where he was sure the dragon would be, he encountered nothing but cool vapor. Finally, when the white was gone and the ruins had returned—minus the monster, plus some scattered scales—he saw her slumped against a sewer wall. The runes on the ceilings and walls seemed to retain traces of that divine glow; in hindsight, the place was more kennel than tunnel.

Azrael was conscious, though her halo had fallen from her hair and had clattered onto the ground; amidst the remnants of ash, a swirl of feathers blew all around her. She looked alive. She was alive. But her eyes, while retaining their spark, lacked recognition, and she struggled to keep them open.

“Wipe those tears away, human. I’m just going to take a long rest.”

She yawned, leaning with her back against the runes. “As long as a creature of magic slumbers beneath the city, the city will remain… for the next two hundred years. They wake or die, and the next creature arrives… so it goes.”

“What are you on about? You’ll catch a cold out here like this; Az, let’s go home.”

“Home? Were we really that close?” Azrael said. “It’s no wonder that when I look at you, I feel…”

Xander stepped away, not breathing, slipping the elixir back in his pocket. Then he inadvertently flared his own candle, magical sparks spitting from his mouth. “Azrael. How many memories did you burn to use that last attack? Did you choose what you could burn? Hey! Was that your price? Did you burn everything that we’ve done?!”

“A guardian angel who erases her purpose won’t be a good guard. And with the right trigger, even valuable memories can return…”

Xander paused, slid down against the pillar next to her, and she instinctively leaned on his shoulder.

What a stupid trade, he thought. Her years for the city’s. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

He covered his mouth, as if to laugh madly—and dropped something he’d concealed in his hand onto the stone. Azrael’s small, gentle fingers found the empty vial of the 200-Year Poison, grasping the glass as though she’d already lost her sight. Her breathing hitched.

“You’re so… strange…”

As Xander drifted away, his lips had a bittersweet taste. Perhaps an angel’s body settled to rest more slowly than a man’s, as when the brew overwhelmed him, the last thing he saw was Azrael smile while nodding off.

***

“And that’s the ending. I apologize if I’ve brought you too much excitement in these late hours… maybe I should have made a sleeping draught instead of a story,” the innkeeper says. She makes a sweeping motion, her hood falling askew, and you could have sworn you glimpsed two little white horns in her red, curly hair. “You want another story? Even though it’s nearly dawn?”

You thump your empty mug on the counter.

“Alright… well, they say that far beneath the city, if you dig below the ashes and ancient rocks… you’ll find a layer of feathers. If you dig below even that, then you’ll find two sleeping guardians. They’re the gods of duty and unconditional love, and if you pray to them, you’ll find your forever partner even in a noisy city like this one.”

“Ah, I’m so envious! I wish I could grow old with someone who understands me. But even though I’m a romantic at heart, my mind knows that a sleeping guardian can’t grant wishes any more than a sleeping demon can curse someone. Though I would say that demons are definitely still a force to be reckoned with… yes, I think that a lonely imp could make someone near-immortal, if she wanted to, in various ways…”

The innkeeper gives you a smile that’s stunningly bright, and despite that “brightness” her face remains dark under her hood. “I wonder what’s in the drink that I gave you? Hehe, did I scare you? The 200-Year Elixir is just something in a story, right?”

“But my, you’re a wonderful listener. If you’d like more stories, then please keep coming back to the Pitchfork Inn. Once a week… once a month… the time is of little consequence to me, as long as you keep coming back. Who knows? If we truly enjoy each other’s company, we might find ourselves together every year for the next few centuries.”