On the rocky outskirts of the town stood a shack, so small it barely provided shade.
A catfolk girl, still in her mid-teens, emerged from the shack and called out, “Camille! How’s Neu?”
“Chaco,” Camille said. “Neu is hanging in there.”
Neu must have been the name of the dark elf boy. The girl, Chaco, was beastkin, so she was probably not related to any of them by blood. But from her relief at hearing that Neu was bloodied but uninjured, it was obvious she thought of him as family regardless.
“Um... Who are they?” she asked.
“These two healed Neu’s wounds,” Camille explained perfunctorily, clearly dissatisfied.
Despite the fact Elena and I were obviously suspicious and had our faces hidden under our hoods, Chaco hurriedly bowed to us. “Th-Thank you! But, I can’t really offer you anything...”
“He’s paying, so don’t worry,” I said, gesturing at Camille. “You do know this boy is sick, right?”
“Yes,” Chaco confirmed.
She told us that they were street urchins. That there were many others—abandoned by parents who could no longer provide for them, left behind by adults trying to escape from town, orphaned by mafia conflicts. These were just a few of the countless reasons a child might become homeless in Cutlass.
Even among urchins, the strong stole food and money from the weak, paving their road to adulthood with the corpses of others. So the weak banded together to survive, living on the edge of death in desolate rocky terrain to avoid having their meager belongings taken.
Ron and Camille had chanced upon the dark elf boy, Neu, and learned of his extreme poverty. They’d been offering him food and assistance in various ways since. Besides Neu and Chaco, two other children lived in this shack: a dogfolk child and a small, somewhat sturdy girl. A dwarf, perhaps?
But Camille couldn’t provide for every urchin. They were everywhere in this town, after all.
To survive, this small group had Chaco, the eldest, extract fiber from succulents in the area to craft footwear and sell it for a handful of coppers daily. Neu, for his part, had found work tending giant beetle larvae in town.
These larvae were nutritious and a precious food resource in this region. But since giant beetles were monsters, even their larvae could be dangerous. And since few were willing to take on such risky work, it was easy for an urchin like Neu to get a job caring for them. The result was as we’d seen: He’d gotten unlucky, been bitten by beetle larvae, and contracted some disease.
Neu had gradually grown weaker and come to the realization he was sick. When Chaco and the other children began to worry, he’d lied to them and gone to work. That had been two days ago. I speculated that after that, Neu’s employer realized he was sick and had him beaten and dumped in the alley. Most likely they knew that the children caring for the larvae could get sick and simply killed and disposed of those who had outlived their usefulness.
“Lena, could you fill that jar with water?” I asked, using Elena’s chosen nickname. “Chaco, I need cloth and fresh clothes for him.”
“Yes.”
“O-Okay!”
With that, I began ripping off Neu’s bloodied clothes. Camille approached, rattled, and I handed him the tatters and instructed him to burn them and bury the ashes in the desert. Though infection from contact with the clothes was unlikely, it was still better to take the precaution.
I wasn’t sure whether Cleanse could completely eliminate all risk of infection, so I doused Neu with the water Elena had created, used the rags Chaco brought to scrub off the blood, and, when Camille came back, sent him out again to burn the rags. I was about to use a spell I’d never used before, and if possible, it was best to not have any distractions around.
“Will it be okay?”
“I can do it,” I said. “Recover.”
Recover was a Level 4 light sorcery spell specifically for curing illness. Like Detoxify, it required knowledge of the cause of the disease to work.
My Light Magic skill had been at Level 3 until now. At Level 4, the spells Recover and Blessing became available. But between my aether reserves and my pink hair, which made me immune to disease, I’d never seen the point in bothering to train the skill further.
Now, however, I had a solid reason. And not just Neu’s illness—my coming battles would probably benefit from Level 4 Light Magic as well. Blessing increased physical and sorcery resistance, and I knew I would need it if I was to attain my goal of becoming the true Fiend, the war demon that my mistress had aimed, and ultimately failed, to become. Cere’zhula had sought to master Light and Shadow Magic both, and so would I.
This was just another opportunity for me to grow stronger.
“Did it work?” Camille asked, his expression conflicted.
“Yeah.”
Recover had done its job: Neu was cured. But focusing so hard on an unfamiliar spell had left me exhausted, and Elena and the others took over and sent me outside to rest.
Camille had likely looked conflicted because he was torn between annoyance that I’d driven him from the shack and assigned him menial chores and gratitude that I’d cured Neu’s illness.
I estimated only about ten people in Claydale had the skill necessary to cast Level 4 light spells. Archbishops of the Holy Church, perhaps. I’d also heard that in Cutlass there were two such individuals, one with the Hogroth and one with the Kiluri. Seeking treatment from them would likely have taken either of them at least ten large gold coins and appropriate connections.
Camille had offered me one large gold coin for the spell. I would’ve taken a small gold instead, but to avoid bruising his pride, I’d accepted his offer. Seeing him now, trying to show gratitude despite his ill temper and wariness, I realized he was unexpectedly principled.
“Thanks,” he mumbled earnestly. “You saved him.”
“It’s fine,” I said with a small wave of my hand.
Then I lowered my hood in the shade to dry my sweaty hair, and Camille’s narrow eyes widened.
Right. He’s never seen my hair before.
“Pink-gold hair...?” he muttered.
“Something wrong with it?” I asked.
“No... It’s unusual, that’s all.”
He averted his gaze and hesitated as though searching for words. Was something the matter? If he was going to act bothered by my appearance, I figured I might as well ask what I’d been wondering myself.
“Right. Just like adventurers with magic weapons and dark elves with light skin are unusual, that’s all.”
He stared intently into my eyes in a way that would’ve sent even wild beasts fleeing. After a long few moments of complete silence, he looked away and sighed heavily.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“You’re inexperienced.”
I didn’t clarify. Perhaps my words had done something, because he frowned again.
After another interval of silence, he quietly asked, “How old do I look?”
“If you’re a dark elf, I’d guess around thirty.”
Like me, he looked to be about the age of a young human adult. Dark elves were long-lived, however, hence my guess.
“I’m fifteen,” he said. “As you guessed, I’m part human. And aether-driven growth works the same for humans and dark elves.”
“I see...”
“The human woman who birthed me said her own mother had beautiful pink-gold hair.”
While hair colors that could be called pinkish existed, only direct descendants of the Melrose family line had true pink hair. Was his grandmother a Melrose noblewoman who had married out?
If so...perhaps we were relatives.
“I heard my dark elf father gave my human mother these magic daggers,” he explained, touching the blade’s hilt somewhat wistfully. “For protection.”
So it was special, then.
“Where’s your mother?” I asked.
“Killed,” he replied. “By my father’s other wife.”
“I see...”
This time, I sensed anger rather than sadness in his tone.
“What about your parents?” he asked.
“Gone,” I replied. “They died protecting me.”
“I see.”
Anger had seeped into my own tone. My anger, however, wasn’t directed at the monsters that had killed my parents—but rather at the otome game that had dictated my fate. What was Camille’s anger directed at, I wondered? Why was he helping street children? Why was he hostile to the Munza gang?
We never spoke of any of those things, instead sitting in silence until Elena and Chaco came to get us.