A Hero With/Out Time

Chapter 21: Their Capital. (Part 4)

As we barged into the inn Ronalt, Ardent and Taylor were already waiting for us at table. Taylor's slave collar was glowing red and she was glaring at Lara annoyed while tapping her folded arms.

"Sorry Taylor," Lara said as we entered. The collar stopped glowing.

She huffed in reply, "I'm not sure if I should be proud or not. You actually doing that, how unlike you."

"We can talk about that later." I waved to Ronalt and Ardent, "Did you see what was happening outside?"

They both nodded, Ronalt frowned, "I always had a bad feeling about the Demons but this is not what I had in mind. I thought it was strange, they didn't look like they were ready for war, their armies smaller than ours and their people carefree. But I see now, even if it's just at night, if they could launch an invasion with the strength of the denizens, even the Empire would not stand a chance."

"It's amazing for sure," Ardent began, "but the fact we have only seen it here means they aren't able to use it so easily."

"From what I heard it's the Demon Lord's magic," I said. "Which means he's still here at least. If he goes to the front lines however, the Kingdom's armies will be crushed." Even if they survived the night, a fresh army of demons would see them in the morning. There would be no rest. No wonder they were so confident to act aggressively to the Kingdom. Taking Greytree would have given them the perfect staging point to launch an invasion and although we prevented that, it was only a matter of time. We had all heard rumours of how powerful the Demon Lord was, how he could lift mountains and sway armies but we had all chalked it up with a grain of salt. After all, they were rumours and while some did mention the denizens of night... we never expected them to be this true. Thankfully however we still had a Hero, we had Lara and our eyes turned to her.

Ronalt leaned forward his hands clasped tightly in front of his head, "Now more than ever our mission is of great importance. Lara if we cannot dissuade the Demon Lord, you know what we must do."

She nodded slowly, "I've prepared myself."

"Good," he sighed. "I truly am sorry for bringing you to this world but without you we'd be plunged into a chaos of war and death."

Lara let out a confident smile, "That's why I'm here though, after all I'm the Hero."

"Yes you are," Ronalt straightened his back.

Earnest and Marley came not long after. We spent the rest of the day inside the inn as we formulated our plan. My job was as before to oversee the party and make sure everyone's wellbeing was kept. The others would spread across the different districts of the city and try gather what information they could. Our time limit was set to one week, at the end of which we'd head to the Demon Lord regardless. My body shivered knowing just what was to come.

As midnight came we each headed to our own rooms. Mine faced the street outside and even from my window I could see denizens prowl the paved stone carrying out the construction work that would have surely died down in a normal city. The strange thing was as much as it was foreign and sent a chill down my spine, the city itself, what it had accomplished and where it was heading, I admired it. From their history I knew that cities like Citlia were a rarity for demons, at most they had towns like Tona and most tribes were like Kerchest with majority being one race. This was the Demon Lord's doing and I could see why the people loved him and as we learnt in the Temple, some a little too much. Even from my walk earlier I had heard many demons spouting anti-human sentiments, though the same could be said when I was in the Kingdom's Capital against the demons. We really were the same.