The Demon's Bride

Blood Moon-II

Elise strolled not a little far from the Church. Her first thought was to buy some gifts for William, her parents, and her aunt. After window shopping at the vendors on the streets, she spotted a clothing store for newborn babies and stared at a pair of red shoes that took her attention when she walked in a sight for a long moment. "This would look good for Betty," she thought to herself and stepped into the store.

She took the pair and looked at the shopkeeper to inquire. "How much is this one?"

"Six copper young lady." The woman spoke and saw Elise nodding in approval to how cheap the pair was. "Then I'll take this one." She tucked in her hand on the inner pocket of her dress and pulled up seven copper to hear the woman spoke again. "A present for someone?"

"My niece will be born early this month," Elise explained, joy bouncing of her eyes to place the coins on the woman's palm. The woman saw her excited face and couldn't help to smile back at the good news.

"That must be surely exciting." The woman returned and passed the brown paper bag to her. "Thank you for visiting."

Elise nodded and returned the woman's kind wishes. After an hour of visiting each vendor, Elise's hand was packed with several brown bags that now she reflected on how she has bought too much and how it would be a little burden for the people she would share a seat in the coach. The money she had been collecting to visit the capital has left to some leftover silvers that she could use for transport. Feeling that her travel in the capital was enough for today, she decided to go back home before the sky turns dark.

She walked over to search for a shared coach that was hoarding the street and caught one that would pass to the road of her town. When she entered, she noticed only a couple of people was inside the coach. Elise took a seat and leaned her back.

"The dark sorcerers again. That damned beings, when would they stop making troubles and killing people?" A passenger of the coach spoke with his wife, staring at the newspaper covering the dark sorcerers with much hatred.

"I fear that they would come to our town." The wife replied a hint of fear could be seen well from her face.

"The sorcerers are with us, don't they? We don't need to worry." The man ensured but the woman's worries didn't seem to ease from her husband's convince.

"But who knows? The dark sorcerers are far stronger than the normal sorcerers. The safest place is only here in Afgard. As I thought, should we stay here instead and wait until the matter dies down?" The woman brought the topic and the man seemed to be tired after hearing her speaking of the matter over and over.

"We don't have the money to keep on living in the capital. Don't worry too much, the Church would do something about it before we know it."

Conversing aloud, Elise couldn't help but to overhear their argumentation the couple was having. Like how her parents were, it wasn't a new thing for her to hear people discussing the matter of dark sorcerers with grim. As the dark sorcerers used very different magic than the normal sorcerers, they were easily frightened by humans. They were referred as "dark sorcerers" out of the reason that they used black magic to forcefully summon frightening mythical beings from the abandoned land Marshfoth to the towns.

When someone mentioned "The sorcerers" there was only one particular person who would float on her mind. The person who saved her from being a slave and the person she would ever be grateful to, Ian White the Lord of Warine. It had been nine years since she was adopted by the Scott family but her gratitude to the man never faded. She once heard from the person who sent her away, Kyle said that the Lord insisted on searching her adoptive home for her protection. After knowing that the Lord didn't kick her out due to anger but out of her safety, Elise settled her incentive to meet the people who have saved her, the people in White's Mansion. However, as a human, the weak being couldn't freely enter the Warine Land except for one title, the Churchmen. This was how she decided to work in the Church even with her parent's indirect oppositions.