One Rainy Day

For three days straight, the rain poured down upon Eastcliff, at times heavy, at times light, but hardly stopping entirely. Stuck in the temple due to the rain, Theodore was getting rather restless. Standing by the window, he glared at the heavens, willing the rain to cease with all of his might. Sadly, he was but a Larva. Such powers were beyond him.

"Theo!"

Suddenly, Theodore felt a tackle from behind. So feeble an assault it was, his posture did not shift by the slightest breadth. As it proved to be of no threat, he proceeded to ignore it. It was, however, a mistake as the aggressor then began to bury their little face into his back, brushing their chin by the side of their spine. A shiver ran up his vertebrae, causing his stance to crumble. For Theodore, his back was his greatest weakness and the gremlin attacking him knew that fact very well.

"Fio! I thought I told you to stop doing that! Don't you ever listen?"

Turning around to face the culprit, Theodore found standing before him a girl wearing a bob-cut. A head shorter than he was, the girl called Fio was but a year younger than Theodore.

"You never listen to Lina either," Fio retorted. "She kept telling you not to go play in the hills but you go anyways."

"She's not the boss of me. I don't have to listen to her."

"But she said it's dangerous there."

"It's fine. I'm not afraid of dangers. I can deal with them, no problem."

"Why's that?"

"Why, you say," Theodore tilted his head to the side. He couldn't just come out and tell her that he's the Demon Lord reborn. That was going to be a secret he'll keep forever if need be.

"It's because I'm a hero. Dangers are nothing to me," he eventually said, exaggeratingly puffing out his chest. "Even a Demon Lord or two are no match for me."

Even as he lied through his teeth, he laughed inwardly at the hilarity of the claim that only he would understand.

"What!? No way! That's a lie for sure!"

Unfortunately, it appeared that Fio was not nearly naive enough to fall for such trickery. To that, Theodore could only shrug. He wasn't exactly trying all too hard in the first place.

As if providing an escape, the faint sound of a door being swung open could be heard alongside the pouring of the rain. It came from the front, meaning that someone had entered the temple. At a time such as this, it couldn't possibly be a visitor.

"Welcome back, Lucas," Theodore greeted the soaking wet young man at the door. He had a head of golden hair neatly trimmed and a pair of charming green eyes.

"Hey, Theodore, Fio, you two must be bored out of your mind with all this raining."

"You have no idea. What about you? You're home early?"

"Well there's just no customers coming in this weather and the rest of the commissions were already finished, so I got sent home early."

Lucas was the eldest of the children taken in by the temple, six years older than Theodore. He had taken an apprenticeship under a local blacksmith and was one of the two out of five orphans here that has an income. The other one was Edwin, who helps out in the fields. Thanks to these two, Maria no longer had to worry about the temple's upkeep and was eased of her burdens greatly.

"Welcome home, Lucas," another voice called out from down the hall. Walking over a towel in her hand was Maria, wearing her white robes as per usual.

"I'm back! Speaking of which, did Edwin return yet?"

"Edwin?" A puzzled expression appeared across Maria's face as she handed the towel over to Lucas. "I haven't seen him. Wasn't he supposed to be helping with the new reservoir?"

Due to the rains, the townsfolk feared that it would cause the river to overflow and flood the fields. As such, they gathered and began digging an emergency reservoir to help ease the water flow.

"They were already done for the day and the workers all got together to grab a drink. I saw Edwin on the way and he told me that he'll have just one drink before coming back."

"Well, I certainly hope that he didn't have too much to drink."

"If he isn't back, I'll go fetch him. You know how he is. He gets pressured into things fairly easily. I'll bet the old farts got him to drink till he blacked out."

With that, Lucas went out into the rain once more.

"Oh, there he goes," Maria uttered, her brows furrowed. "What am I going to do with him?"

As the eldest of the bunch, Lucas felt responsible for the others who he saw as siblings. To Maria's distress, his care was at times to the disregard of himself. Back when they were younger, Lucas would always run after Theodore whenever he would go into the hills. Not once was Lucas able to catch him, however, with Theodore proving himself far more familiar with the place than a child his age had any rights to be. With time, Lucas learned to let Theodore be, the latter looking to be rather at home out in the hills.

"It's fine isn't it?" Lina chimed in as he came walking down the hall, taking the wet towel from Maria. "At least he's responsible and doesn't run off to god knows where without telling anybody."

"You hear that Fio?" said Theodore as he patted Fio on the head. "You should grow up to be someone responsible like Lucas and not someone who takes forever to finish her chores."

"Shu- shut up! I'm just making sure it's done right!" Lina's complexion grew red and quickly argued back. "The way you do it is too careless and sloppy."

"But it's not as if I'm doing a terrible job, right? If it's good enough, it's good, right?"

Turning towards Maria, Theodore sought support. Lina as well, turned towards her, hoping that Maria would back her up.

"Well, I do love how detail-oriented Lina is. Perhaps she could be an artisan someday?"

Skillfully, Maria attempted to change the subject.

"You think so?" Theodore saw what Maria was doing and a small devil budded in his heart. "Speaking of which, the other day, I saw her with a piece of wood she found somewhere and-

"Shush! Shush! Shush!" Lina hastily ran up and covered Theodore's mouth with the towel in her hand, her face ever redder than before. "I thought I told you to keep it a secret!"

Even with his mouth covered, Lina could see in Theodore's eyes that he was laughing, infuriating her further. However, before she got to say anything more...

"Maria!" The door burst open. Standing before it was Lucas, drenched and panting. "Quickly, can you go prepare some bandages? Strings and needles as well. Oh, and hot water too."

Before anyone could ask a question, two more figures appeared behind him. One of them was another young man with short, dark hair with chestnut colored eyes. It was Edwin, the second eldest of the orphans. To Edwin's side was a cloaked figure with an arrow in his thigh and blood dripping down his ankle. A black horn stuck out of the figure's forehead and his large canine teeth were obvious to all with eyes. His skin was unusual as well, being in a dark shade of blue. Clearly, he was neither a man nor an elf. He was a demonkin.

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End of Chapter 6

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