The air hung thick with death. Blood soaked deep into the dirt, and the bodies of knights, demons, ogres, and wolves lay strewn across the battlefield like something no one had bothered to clean up. Yet in the middle of it all, Lilith sat on the ground with her arms folded, scowling like a child denied a sweet.
Wrath perched on a broken log nearby, sparing her only the barest glance. Behind them, more ogres worked at digging graves, shoveling blood-soaked earth without a flicker of hesitation.
She grumbled under her breath. "Ugh, why does he have to be so rude about this? I helped him, and now he's just sitting there sulking like I did something wrong."
Wrath heard every word. He simply didn't care enough to answer.
An ogre emerged from the tree line, dragging a knight along by the collar of his armor. The man was shaking badly, his armor dented in several places, his face drained of every last bit of color.
"P-please. Let me go. I'll tell you anything, just please don't kill me."
Wrath barely spared him a look. "Human."
The knight's breath caught in his throat. His knees buckled beneath him as his wide, terrified eyes darted from Wrath to Lilith and back again. "N-no. No, no. It can't be. The Sin of Wrath."
Wrath's gaze finally settled on Lilith.
Lilith groaned, waving a hand at him. "Oh, no. Don't you look at me like that. You handle him."
Wrath exhaled sharply through his nose. "Lilith." His voice carried something low and dangerous underneath it.
"Nope. Not listening." She turned her face pointedly away.
Wrath's fingers twitched at his side. "I don't have time to waste on weaklings."
Lilith scoffed. "You never have time for anything, do you?"
"I make time for what matters," Wrath said, his tone darkening further.
Lilith rolled her eyes at him. "Oh, please. And what exactly matters to you? Sitting there brooding like some wounded animal?"
Wrath didn't bother answering that.
Lilith's gaze drifted instead to the knight captain's sword still lodged in Wrath's side, forgotten in all the chaos. A slow smirk spread across her lips.
"Well," she said, "since you clearly don't care."
She reached over and yanked the blade free from his side. Blood trickled down in a thin line, but Wrath didn't so much as blink.
Lilith twirled the sword between her fingers, examining it. "Hmm. Doesn't even hurt, huh? You really are boring, you know that?"
With a flick of her wrist, the blade crumbled apart into fine dust.
Wrath let out another sharp breath. "Lilith."
She grinned at him. "You love saying my name. Admit it."
His patience had worn down to nearly nothing. "The knight."
Lilith huffed, rolling her shoulders. "Fine. But not because you asked. I'm doing it for me."
She turned toward the trembling knight, drifting toward him with an almost lazy grace. His chest heaved as he tried to scramble backward, but the ogre's grip held him firmly in place.
"Now, honey." Her voice dropped into something soft and sickly sweet. "This won't hurt a bit."
The knight sobbed, his whole body shaking. "P-please, I'll tell you anything you want to know, I swear it."
Lilith's smile only widened. "I know you will."
She placed both hands against the sides of his head.
Then a sickening crack echoed through the clearing as his skull began to cave inward, the bone bending like it had been caught in a vice no eye could see. Blood began seeping from his ears, his mouth, the corners of his eyes.
His screams broke apart into wet, choked gurgling as his throat fought to push out sound through a skull that was folding in on itself. The pressure kept building, his skin stretching taut, veins bulging dark beneath the surface.
Then his head burst apart like overripe fruit, splattering everything within reach. Fragments of bone embedded themselves into the ogre's thick hide. Blood sprayed across Lilith's face, speckled up Wrath's arm, and dripped from the ogre's fingers in slow, heavy drops.
Lilith wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, glancing down at what remained of the corpse with something close to boredom. "Tch. Nothing useful in there at all. Just some pathetic little message meant for their king. What a waste of a skull."
Wrath rose to his feet. "We're finished here."
The ogre let the knight's body drop to the ground like a sack of grain, no more ceremony than that. Wrath started walking, his heavy steps entirely indifferent to the carnage he left behind him.
Lilith floated up beside him, stretching her arms lazily above her head. "Well, that was fun, at least."
Wrath didn't glance her way. "Weren't you just angry at me a moment ago?"
Lilith's smirk returned in full. "Oh, I still am. And you still owe me for tonight."
Wrath exhaled, long and slow. "I regret ever following you into this."
Lilith laughed, light and unbothered. "You always say that. Every single time."
They walked in silence for a stretch before her voice cut through the quiet again. "You know, we never would have found out about these knights if it wasn't for Greed."
Wrath's eyes darkened at the name. "That doesn't mean I trust a word that comes out of his mouth."
Lilith tilted her head at him, curious. "Oh? What's wrong? Afraid he might actually be right about something for once?"
Wrath scoffed. "He's never right. He just makes sure whatever he does turns a profit for him."
"Fair point," Lilith admitted, laughing softly. "But this whole thing does feel like it was set up from the start."
Wrath's expression hardened further. "Greed's hands are somewhere in this. I can feel it."
Lilith grinned wide. "Ooooh, suspicious now, are we? You think he's playing his little games again?"
"He's always playing them," Wrath said, his voice gone cold.
Lilith hummed thoughtfully, clearly enjoying where this was headed. "Well, I did hear he's been sniffing around some of the nobles lately. And where you find nobles, you usually find secrets worth digging up."
Wrath's fists clenched at his sides. "If I find out he had a hand in any of this."
"Oh, now that would be something worth watching," Lilith said, practically purring the words.
Wrath said nothing more.
Lilith drifted closer, her voice turning teasing. "Bet you ten gold he shows up before we get our answers."
Wrath still didn't respond.
"Coward," she said, grinning.
Wrath let out one more sharp breath and kept walking.
"Oh, I do love getting under your skin," Lilith said, smiling wider than before.
They walked deeper into the forest together, leaving the battlefield and its broken bodies behind them in the dark.
. . . . .
The morning sun barely broke through the dense canopy overhead, the sound of rushing water filling the quiet. Near the riverbank, a lone deer bent its head to drink, ears twitching at every small sound around it. For a moment, everything was calm.
Then an arrow whistled through the air.
The deer dropped instantly, its legs twitching once before going still.
A man stepped out from the underbrush, bow still in hand, a satisfied smirk tugging at his mouth. He wasn't much to look at, brown hair a tangled mess, clothes worn thin and patched in places, but he knew how to hunt, and that was worth more out here than good looks. He crouched beside the deer and pulled the arrow free with practiced ease. "Not bad," he muttered to himself, tossing the arrow toward the river's edge.
That's when he saw them.
Bodies. Bloodied and broken, drifting downstream like debris after a storm. His smirk faded fast. "What the hell."
Then, without warning, a body shot up out of the water, gasping and coughing, clawing desperately at the riverbank. The man tensed on instinct, his hand moving toward the knife at his belt, until he caught sight of the kid's face. Soaked through, barely conscious, with a pair of fox-like ears twitching weakly against his hair.
"Damn it," he muttered, kneeling down beside the boy. He was alive, but only just. The man sighed and scratched at the back of his head. "Guess breakfast's gonna have to wait a bit longer."
He hauled Raphael up onto his shoulder alongside the deer and started the walk back toward the settlement.
. . . . . .
The camp was alive with noise, though not the kind that meant anyone was actually getting work done.
In one corner, two men were beating the hell out of each other. One had a missing tooth, the other a face that had clearly lost more fights than it had won. Around them, a crowd of onlookers hollered like they were watching something worth betting their last coin on.
"Hit him harder, you bastard! My grandmother punches better than that!"
"Break his nose! I've got five coins riding on it!"
"Kick him in the gut! No, wait, kick him in the face! No, just kick him somewhere already!"
"I bet my whole week's rations on this! Don't you dare let me starve, you idiot!"
The boss, still carrying Raphael, barely spared the crowd a glance as he walked past. "Bunch of brainless fools," he muttered under his breath.
Then a voice cut through the noise.
"BOSS!"
A woman hurried toward him, auburn hair swaying with each step. Elara. She wasn't dressed in anything fine, just a simple dress worn soft from use, but that didn't stop half the men nearby from stealing glances her way when they thought no one noticed.
She grinned as she reached him. "Didn't see you in bed this morning. Thought maybe you'd finally come to your senses and left."
He shifted his shoulder slightly, revealing the half drowned fox boy draped over it. "Had to get breakfast. Found this one along the way, too." He dropped the deer to the ground with a dull thud.
Elara's smile faded the moment she got a proper look at Raphael. She took him gently from the boss's arms, frowning at how cold his skin felt against hers. "Another one? Really?" She let out a tired sigh. "We can barely feed the mouths we already have."
"Yeah, well." The boss rolled his shoulders, working out the stiffness from the walk. "He's breathing. Wasn't about to leave him out there to stop being that way."
Elara shook her head, but she pulled Raphael a little closer against her all the same. "You're soft, you know that? Underneath all that growling."
He scoffed, jerking a thumb toward the fight still going strong behind them. "Tell that to those two idiots over there."
One of the fighters, a bald man everyone simply called Bald Man, took a nasty hit to the jaw and staggered sideways. His opponent, missing a front tooth and proud of the gap it left, laughed and cracked his knuckles.
"Come on, that all you got?" Missing Tooth taunted, circling him.
Bald Man spat blood onto the dirt. "You think you're tough? You just got lucky, that's all!"
"Yeah? Then dodge this one!"
The punch landed clean. Bald Man didn't dodge in time, taking the full force of it before spinning and landing flat on his back in the dirt.
The crowd erupted.
"OH, HE'S OUT!"
"That's what I'm talking about right there!"
"Pay up, you losers! Told you Missing Tooth was a beast!"
But Bald Man wasn't finished yet. Groaning, he rolled onto his side and forced himself back up onto shaking legs. His lip had split open, his eyes struggled to focus, but he still raised his fists in front of him. "I ain't losing. Not today."
The crowd loved it even more.
"Look at this guy! Still standing after that!"
"Now that's a real man right there!"
"I don't even care who wins anymore, I just want to see more punching!"
The boss watched the whole spectacle with his irritation building steadily. "Alright. I've had about enough of this."
Elara smirked as she turned to carry Raphael away. "Oh, is this the part where you finally get involved?"
He cracked his neck to one side. "Nah. This is the part where I remind these idiots exactly who runs this camp."
And with that, he marched straight toward the chaos, more than ready to knock some sense into both of them himself.
The two battered men knelt before the boss a short while later, faces swollen, whatever dignity they'd had before now thoroughly gone. The rest of the men stood around in an uneasy circle, shifting their weight, careful not to draw any attention their own way.
The boss glared out at all of them, arms crossed over his chest. "So." His voice came out calm. Too calm. "I go out to haul in food and pull some half drowned kid out of a river, and I come back to find this."
Silence answered him.
"Oh, don't go quiet on me now." His eyes swept slowly across the group. "Someone want to explain why these two fools were trying to kill each other instead of doing any actual work around here?"
The men exchanged nervous glances with one another. A skinny man with a nervous twitch, one of the many who'd been betting on the fight, cleared his throat first. "Uh, boss. We're, ah, real sorry about the disturbance."
The others quickly piled on, voices overlapping in a rush.
"Yeah, we didn't mean for it to get that far!"
"It just got out of hand, is all!"
"Totally avoidable, boss, we know that now!"
The boss raised one hand, and the chorus of apologies died instantly, like he'd cut a rope holding it up. He turned his attention back to the two men kneeling in front of him. "Alright. What exactly started all this?"
Toothless Gregory, the bald one, huffed indignantly. "This buffoon shoved me and didn't even bother apologizing for it!"
The burly man missing a tooth scoffed right back. "I barely touched you, you whiny bastard!"
"Barely? I nearly went face first into the damn fire!"
"You tripped over your own two feet, you clumsy rat, don't blame me for that!"
The boss's eye twitched visibly. He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "So let me get this straight. The two of you nearly killed each other over a shove."
More silence answered him.
One of the men standing nearby coughed awkwardly. "Uh, when you say it like that, boss, it does sound a bit stupid, yeah."
"A bit?" The boss looked ready to explode right there. "While I was out hunting and dragging some half dead kid out of the river, the two of you were in here slapping each other around over a shove?"
The two fighters, now practically clinging to each other for support, nodded hesitantly, not daring to argue the point.
The boss cracked his knuckles, one at a time.
"Oh no," someone muttered.
"Oh gods, please, no," said another.
It was already too late.
The first punch sent Gregory sprawling into the dirt. The next one sent Missing Tooth tumbling right after him. What followed wasn't really a fight anymore so much as a lesson neither of them would forget anytime soon.
"YOU MORONS!" A solid hit landed.
"I BREAK MY BACK KEEPING THIS CAMP RUNNING!" Another followed.
"AND YOU'RE OUT HERE WASTING EVERYONE'S TIME!" A third landed with a sound that made everyone watching wince.
The men standing off to the side flinched with every impact. One leaned toward his friend, keeping his voice low. "Thank the gods that's not us right now."
"Yeah," the other muttered, swallowing hard as Gregory let out a pained wheeze. "I think I want my mother."
The boss finished with one last, particularly cruel punch, straight to Gregory's groin.
A collective wince rippled through everyone watching.
"Ooooh, that one's gonna sting for a while."
"I felt that one in my own soul, honestly."
As Gregory curled in on himself, whimpering pathetically, the boss dusted off his hands like he'd just finished some minor chore. "Anyone else feel like wasting my time today?"
A sharp chorus of "No, boss!" rang out from every direction at once.
Satisfied, he turned away from the mess. "Good. Now get back to work before I start swinging again, and this time I won't stop at two of you."
The men scattered like startled rats, and the camp slowly settled back into something resembling normal, minus two bruised idiots left nursing their wounds in the dirt.
Raphael's eyes snapped open. His chest rose and fell in sharp, panicked breaths as he took in a room he didn't recognize, the scent of wood and dried herbs thick in the air around him. He sat up fast, every muscle locked tight, his claws extending on pure instinct before his mind had even caught up.
Elara, who'd been sweeping quietly in the corner, turned at the sudden movement. She blinked in surprise at finding him awake, her expression shifting quickly into relief. "Oh, finally up, are you?"
Raphael's sharp eyes darted around the unfamiliar room, confusion and wariness written plainly across his face. His tail bristled as he scrambled to his feet too fast, his knees immediately buckling beneath him. He caught himself against the wall before he fell, breathing hard.
Elara, entirely unbothered by his reaction, approached slowly. "Relax. You're safe here, I promise. No one's going to hurt you." She crouched down slightly to bring herself closer to his eye level. "Well. Unless you start something first. Then I make no promises at all."
Raphael flinched and stepped back from her, his whole body coiled tight, every muscle on edge. He didn't speak, but his golden eyes burned with open suspicion.
Elara sighed, shaking her head. "Great. Another one with trust issues. Just my luck lately."
Before Raphael could react, she lunged forward and pinned him down in one smooth, practiced motion. He let out a muffled grunt of protest, struggling against her grip, his claws scraping uselessly against the wooden floor. His ears flattened back against his skull in pure frustration.
"Is that really how you treat someone who saved your life?" Elara teased, pressing down just enough to keep him from wriggling free. Raphael's face twisted with disbelief. How is she this strong?
She tilted her head, studying his frustrated expression with growing amusement before finally smirking down at him. "What, did you think I'd be some delicate little flower? Hate to break it to you, kid, but I wrestle drunk idiots for fun around here."
Raphael's tail flicked wildly in protest beneath her. He gave one last useless struggle before finally going still, realizing she had no intention of letting him go anytime soon.
At that moment, the door creaked open.
"Elara?"
She hopped off him immediately, straightening up like nothing at all had just happened. Raphael, meanwhile, lay there dazed on the floor, his pride thoroughly in pieces. His tail flicked in irritation, but he didn't bother moving.
"I'll be right back," Elara said cheerfully, giving him a light pat on the head as she stepped toward the door. "Stay put, fox boy."
Raphael sat up slowly, rubbing at his arms where she'd held him down. Stay put? Not a chance in hell.
Just as he pushed himself back onto his feet, the door swung open again.
This time a man walked in, his presence heavier than Elara's by a wide margin. He wasn't especially large, but something about the way he carried himself spoke of authority that didn't need to be announced. His gaze landed on Raphael immediately, his expression giving nothing away.
The boss crossed his arms, looking Raphael over from head to toe. "Hmph. Finally awake, are you?"
Raphael's ears twitched. His body tensed all over again. His claws flexed at his sides.
Then he lunged.
The boss dodged with almost no effort at all, catching Raphael's tail mid air.
A second later, Raphael found himself yanked backward and slammed flat against the floor.
He groaned, his tail twitching like it had personally been betrayed by the rest of his body.
The boss chuckled, looking down at him. "Fast. But not fast enough, kid."
The door burst open a third time.
Elara stepped inside holding a plate of food, only to stop dead in her tracks. Her gaze moved from Raphael sprawled across the floor to the boss standing over him.
A long, heavy silence followed.
Then she inhaled sharply. "What. The hell. Did you do to him?"
The boss immediately threw his hands up. "I didn't do anything, I swear!"
Elara stomped over and smacked him hard upside the head.
"OW! Elara, what was that for!"
"That's not how you treat a child, you absolute idiot!"
"I barely even touched him!"
Raphael, still facedown against the wood, weakly lifted one hand in protest. Liar.
Elara shot the boss one more withering glare before kneeling down beside Raphael. Her expression softened as she gently touched his shoulder, checking him over for any real injury. He flinched at the contact but didn't pull away from her this time.
"You okay?" she asked, her voice gone soft.
Raphael didn't answer right away. He simply stared up at her, his golden eyes unreadable, guarded in a way that made her chest ache a little without knowing why.
Elara sighed, though there was real warmth buried in it. "You shouldn't just attack every person you meet, you know. Not everyone here means you harm."
Raphael looked away from her, his tail flicking once in quiet defiance.
Elara huffed out a small laugh and stood, holding the plate of meat out toward him. "Here. Eat something."
Raphael eyed the food warily but made no move toward it.
Elara raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh, you think I poisoned it or something?" She sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes at her own performance. "Fine. Watch this." She picked up a piece herself and popped it into her mouth, chewing loudly on purpose. "Mmm. Totally safe, see?"
Raphael hesitated a long moment before finally reaching out and taking a piece, nibbling at it cautiously like he expected it to bite back.
Elara grinned, satisfied. "See? Told you so."
He didn't respond, simply continuing to chew in silence.
The boss, who'd been quietly watching the whole exchange from where he stood, let out a low chuckle to himself. There was something almost amusing about the way Elara handled the boy, stern one moment, endlessly patient the next.
He turned toward the door, shaking his head with a faint smirk still on his face.
"I'll leave the two of you to it," he muttered, amusement clear in his voice as he stepped back outside.
Elara barely acknowledged him leaving, too focused on Raphael, who continued nibbling at his food with the same wary, careful expression as before.
"You eat too slow," she teased, watching him chew with obvious patience she hadn't shown anyone else in a long while.
Raphael didn't look up at her, but his tail swayed slightly where it rested against the floor.
Elara smirked and reached out to ruffle his hair again, gentle this time.
Raphael flinched at the touch but didn't pull away from it.
"You're a strange one, fox boy," she murmured, more to herself than to him.