Death’s Vassal – Fire and Sea

Death's Vassal

Being a member of demonic nobility is never easy, but especially for a member of the Ketri, the species that has always stood at the right hand of the demon emperors. The Ketri are known for their ability to gruesomely kill with a single touch and their penchant for raising bloodthirsty familiars on their own poisonous blood, but as a daughter of the family, all Etklawen has ever known is kill or be killed. So when her father kidnaps the only son of their budding arch-enemy and sets all of the young members to either break or kill him, it’s just another boring occurrence in their household. If anything, the boy himself is more interesting than the task at hand.

Shodrit’s family is young. His parents were among the first Hytan to ever exist, but it didn’t take long for their magic to skyrocket them into political power. He never expected that he’d end up kidnapped by another clan, much less that the clan in question would be as thoroughly messed up as it is. In the midst of the torture and abuse, Etty is an interesting contradiction he thinks he can get through to. If he can convince her to help him, he might have a path to freedom, but as he talks to her, he finds himself drawn to her in a way that may undermine his plans, and he isn’t certain if she’s even capable of feeling the same for him.

Warning: Some slightly graphic imagery.

Chapter One: Heir

“Etty, come out! You’ll never believe what father’s brought!” A voice came from outside Etklawen’s room, along with a knock on the door. Even her sister knew better than to barge into her room without permission.

“What is it?” Etty asked, not even standing from her seat at the window.

Her sister Tillet took the statement as permission to enter and the tall, wooden doors to Etklawen’s room creaked open. Etklawen’s room was perfectly unexceptional for one of the rooms in the mansion, a tall, but poorly lit room with a canopy bed and comfy chairs around a circular table, along with a single, intricately designed glass window set into one wall. Besides the peculiar feature that all of her furniture was some shade of red, the room was neither decorated nor modified in any way. Her window was wide open, as it usually was, and she was staring out of it sipping a type of tea that would poison almost any other type of demon. Around her, five long, shimmering red fishes were sprawled about on various pieces of furniture, one floating in the air beside her head, staring out the window with her.

Most people, demons and humans alike, would have said she was fairly pretty, with refined features, long dark grey hair, and a slender frame, but there was something disconcerting about that beauty. Her features were just a bit too pointy, frame just a bit too fragile. Her eyes were unusually large and were red in color, and as with all Ketri, those vibrantly-colored eyes outright glowed. When she turned to look at Tillet, those glowing crimson eyes looked bored, but there was something sinister about that boredom that would have caused a shudder up the spine of most.

Not Tillet, though. Tillet, with her black hair and glowing teal eyes, was just as much of a sight to see, a deranged look to her enthusiastic smile. “Aren’t you curious? You might like this one.” She bared her teeth, which were sharper than they should have been.

“And what is so special about this one?” Etklawen asked, going back to her tea.

“Well for one, it isn’t dead.” That was a bit odd, Etty supposed. Their father didn’t usually bring anything back alive. “Come, see for yourself. Father has called us all down to greet it, perhaps one of us can claim it as our personal plaything.”

Etty wasn’t really interested in a personal plaything, but a summons from their father wasn’t something she could ignore, so she sighed and stood up, following her sister down to the front entrance of the mansion. The fishes that had been sitting around the room followed her, silently swimming through the air, flying around her head like some strange halo.

They were not the only ones gathered at the front step. An entire generation’s worth of young Ketri were standing there, all surveying her father with their glowing eyes. And more interestingly… her father’s catch of the day. Her father was holding a boy about her age by the scruff of his neck. That in and of itself, should have been impossible. The very nature of being Ketri meant that her father’s simple touch should have already long since killed the other demon, but that wasn’t what caught Etty’s eye. He felt foreign, somehow. He had sandy hair and blue-brown eyes that didn’t glow. Everything about him was soft, muted in comparison to her stark world, but the look in his eyes was one of restrained rage. He looked at them all like he would kill them the moment he got free of his chains and the gag in his mouth.

“You’re late.” Her father said, casting the sinister crimson gaze she’d inherited from him onto Etklawen and her sister. Etty simply tilted her head to the side and lifted her chin a little, wanting him to get on with his display. Apparently she was the last to arrive, because her father didn’t give the congregation another glance, before dragging the boy upwards for all of them to see, ignoring the boy’s shout of pain through the gag. “Shodrit Hytan.” He snarled at them.

Tillet giggled, and other of the younger more enthusiastic Ketri gave squeals of excitement, jostling each other to demand the prisoner was theirs. The older ones made less noise, but even them exchanged glances between themselves. A Hytan. That explained things.

The Hytan were a new sort of demon. They’d only been born a generation ago, but their ability was an affront to the Ketri. The Ketri could kill any kind of demon besides the line of the demon emperors themselves with nothing more than a simple touch. Each Ketri was born with their own special brand of killing, and were required to raise familiars they could use to kill even each other – minor demons fed their toxic blood until they become a reflection of their masters, bloodthirsty and venomous. The Ketri were so old that their name itself was the demonic word for the energies of life and decay that flowed through all life, and they had stood as the vassals of the demon emperors for generations.

The Hytan were ostensibly healers. In reality, they could see the weaknesses and illnesses of any living thing, and either heal or worsen it, and even worse, they could even drive others mad. It had not taken long for the Ketri to realize that their power was so potent the Hytan could not be killed by the touch of a Ketri. They were a threat to everything the Ketri stood for, and Shodrit was the only son of the leader of the Hytan. The Hytan weren’t like them. They cared about their family, not just whoever was the strongest.

Her father let it sink in. They’d just kidnapped the future of the Hytan. Then he said, “I have called you all here for the opportunity to prove yourselves. I’ve procured for you a young, strong Hytan. Whichever one of you succeeds in killing or breaking him, I will send to serve the next emperor.” Even the older Ketri began to shift, then. The current emperor was on his last legs, and soon it would be time for the next succession battle. The Ketri did not choose sides between the emperor candidates, which was precisely why a different one was sent to each emperor coronated. “You fools have done nothing worth congratulating in your life. I am giving you a chance. Don’t waste it.”

He ripped the gag and chains off the Hytan and threw him to the ground, gesturing to two servants to pick him up and take him to the dungeon, but the servants were interrupted, as one of the younger Ketri leaped forward. “It’s mine!” He growled, thrusting his hand forward. Following his command, two horrifying purple wyrms streaked forward, mouths open. But to everyone’s surprise, the Hytan stared them down with his muted eyes, and simply stretched out a hand. Before everyone’s eyes, the wyrms shrieked and dropped from the air, writhing in pain, though from what nobody could tell.

A hoarse voice rattled forth from the bloodied boy in front of them all. “Don’t think it’ll be that easy to kill me. I may not be able to see your weaknesses with my powers, but it’s easy enough to see you need your familiars.” He laughed, but the sound came out as mostly a croak. Then he roared, “You’re weak! And the fact that you kidnapped me proves we scare you. Try it, then. I’ll kill all of you.”

Etty sighed and rolled her glowing eyes, turning around to return to her room. A hand pressed against her elbow, and she turned to see her cousin, Gehat. A tall Ketri, several years older than her, with sickly green eyes and short black hair. “Get your hand off me.” She told him quietly, glaring at him. Suddenly all five of her fishes were staring at him, bodies waving back and forth, almost vibrating with excitement. Two small, rodent-like creatures suddenly appeared on his shoulders, the closer one bared its teeth and growled.

He only smiled a little, but removed his hand obligingly. “Turning away from yet another chance, Etty? How long do you think your father will tolerate you wasting your talents away in your room?” He took a step closer to her, so she could almost feel his breath on her face. “Would you like me to gift him to you? No one need know.”

Etty pressed the back of her fingers to one of his cheeks. “How pathetic.” She said, with a quiet laugh. “If father grows restless, I’ll just kill him. And perhaps you for good measure.”

He leaned against her fingers, not minding the threat in the least. “Shall I bring you his head instead, then?”

She pushed his face away, shoving him hard enough to make him stumble slightly. “Do as you will. I’ll speak to the Hytan when I see fit.”

She gave a flick of her fingers and one of the fishes flew over to their new prisoner. He scowled at it, but it slowed as it approached him, eventually settling itself on the ground at his knees. He stared down at it, uncomprehending, and through the fish’s eyes she saw the look of confusion in his face. No one else had sent a familiar to him, certainly not have thought of sending a familiar to just sit and greet him, and once she did so, no one else dared copy her. The Hytan also seemed to think this strange. He reached out one uncertain finger and placed it on the fish’s forehead, before the servants dragged him into the dungeons. Her fish followed him lazily, settling into a nook in the dungeon as comfortably as it had settled into her bedroom. And in the pitch black of the cell he was thrown into, the only source of light became that dull red glow of the fish’s scales.

~~~

The second the door to the cell closed, Shodrit scrambled around the space, using the dim glow of the woman’s familiar to check the room for anything he could use as a weapon. The cell itself was a room of seamless stone, with no weaknesses to exploit other than the door itself, a thick slab of stone whose locks he couldn’t even see. They hadn’t bothered to keep chains on his wrists, and there were no chains in the room, either, though a couple of holes in the stone might have been for chain pegs. A small, smelly metal pot sat in one corner of the room, a couple of blankets in the other, and not a thing else was present. He’d have to see what happened during mealtimes. If they were giving him a chamber pot and blankets, he assumed they were planning to feed him. From what he’d heard, the task was to kill him, so they weren’t going to let a petty thing like starvation do the trick. He sighed and sat on the bedding, leaning his head against the wall behind him.

He closed his eyes, still feeling every nerve on edge, wondering when they were going to be allowed to try killing him. The Ketri. He’d heard of them before, but even with the stories, he couldn’t have imagined what they were really like. One minute, he’d been laughing with his cousins, on the road to collect some herbs, and the next minute, several pairs of glowing eyes gleamed from the shadows all around them, brilliant as jewels, unlike their masters. Knowing that the Ketri’s powers didn’t work on them had made him complacent. He hadn’t expected them to wield weapons, using more familiars than he could count to drive them apart, so they could attack them one on one. He had driven as many of the familiars away from his cousins as possible, and they had their own weapons, so he was hopeful that they had managed to get away, but he had been beaten down and practically wrapped in chains, awaking moments later to find himself on the floor of a carriage, a gag in his mouth and chains around his wrists held by an older demon with brilliant crimson eyes and black hair.

He’d tried to struggle, but the older demon had simply stomped on him hard in the gut, an act that was not fatal for a Hytan, but still hurt enough for him to pass out again. And then he’d awoken again to find himself being dragged across the ground to a gathering crowd of those jewel-like eyes, and he had almost fainted again.

His father had always told him to be wary of the Ketri, because just as the Ketri’s powers didn’t work on them, so their powers failed to work on the Ketri. Shodrit hadn’t realized that it was because the Ketri were shrouded in death. His usual abilities to see the illnesses and weaknesses of others acted like a dark haze, different colors according to the ailment in question, and concentrated where the source of the trouble was, and it had always been basic instinct to know exactly how to manipulate those ailments, whether to heal or exacerbate them. But with the Ketri all he could see was the haze. There was no tint of color, no swirl of patterns, no discernable weaknesses to control with a twitch of his hands. It was as though they were the haze themselves, trapped in a physical form, but still leaking death, pain, insanity, decay in its purest form. When faced with a crowd of them like he had been, for a moment all he could see was a blanket of swirling blackness, snuffing out all light except for that of those glowing eyes, staring at him with a terrifying range of emotions, each more malevolent than the last. Even their joy and curiosity seemed tinged by a sadistic hatred he was certain he had not earned.

He had gotten used to it, eventually, but the memory of that first impression lingered. The servants who had dragged him here were not Ketri. He could see their weaknesses like any other demon, but he knew now that there were many of them in the mansion, and he wouldn’t be able to escape without running into them.

He glanced over at the fish in the room, helpfully glowing away on a crag in one wall. It was an odd thing, long, sleek, and a little tubular, two front fins flat against the floor as if to help balance it. The rest of its fins were unusually long and wide, so that they would flow behind it like a banner in the wind. The odd thing was that it was familiar to him. And yet completely foreign. By all of its features, it looked like a Skyfish, a species of demon native to the Skylake, a deep bowl-shaped valley near his home, with shallow little pools of water dotting the ground. But Skyfish were a beautiful silver, and they did not glow. It was eerie, a perversion of his home, but then the fish rolled over like it wanted to take a nap, and he couldn’t help but crack a smile. He hadn’t expected to find even the smallest measure of comfort in a place like this.

He frowned at it, reaching out a finger to scratch it under the chin, or where its chin would be if fishes had chins. It didn’t react. He couldn’t help but wonder if it was like its master in any way. When she’d sent the fish to him, he’d tried to look over at her. She hadn’t looked back at him, so all he’d been able to make out through her personal death haze was that she had long, straight hair, maybe a dark grey color. All of them seemed to have hair on a scale of black and white, though it was difficult to tell through the haze. He didn’t remember her, though. He remembered the eyes of the man who had been speaking to her, there had been something especially disgusting about the way he’d been looking at him, but he couldn’t recall hers in particular.

“Well aren’t you lucky?” A high-pitched voice giggled from outside the stone door. It sounded female, but he couldn’t tell anything besides that. “Etty’s laid her claim on you. Oh, the rest of us will play with you, count on that, but still. Lucky, lucky you. Usually Etty finds playthings like you boring. Let’s hope you don’t disappoint her.”

“What are you talking about?” He yelled through the door, displeased to hear his voice still cracking. “Who are you? What’s so special about this Etty?”

“Ooh…” Another high-pitched voice voice chimed in, sounding rather similar, but more masculine, somehow. “You don’t get to call her Etty. It’s Etklawen for you, if she allows you to call her at all.”

“It’s not that she’s special.” The girl’s voice said. “It’s just she’s so easily bored, and she gets awfully violent when she’s bored. She might actually succeed in killing you!”

“And then what are we to do? She’s not exactly suitable to becoming the righthand of the emperor.”

Shodrit shook his head. “Do you even care about who becomes the righthand of the emperor?” He asked, pressing his body against the door, seeing if it would budge.

There was laughter outside the door, and he realized there were more than two people out there. Multiple voices answered, some affirmative, some negative, but he realized something through the crush of their talk. Whether they cared about serving the emperor or not, they were all much more interested in the task itself. They wanted to break him, or kill him. Not because it was what they had to do, but because they’d enjoy it. They were enjoying tormenting him right now. In the dark of the prison, Shodrit placed his hand on his one source of light and comfort, stroking it slightly. They didn’t know it yet, but they weren’t capable of breaking him, and that meant he could break them.

Chapter Two: Etty

For the next three days, Shodrit lost track of what was done to him. Only a couple of Ketri had tried to kill him. When they were set to kill him, they weren’t allowed to restrain him, for some twisted sense of equity he supposed, and these youngsters were absolutely terrible with weapons. It was frankly kind of embarrassing, and he’d almost felt bad for thrashing them as soundly as he had. The rest just kept looking for inventive and excruciating ways to hurt him, as if that would eventually break his soul. He supposed it would for any other type of demon. If anything, this strange regimen mostly just left him tired. The only thing that had legitimately made him nervous was one’s threat of depriving him of sleep, because that one might actually get to him, but their time with him seemed limited. It wasn’t easy to keep track of time, but by his count, each one spent a few hours at most with him. He wasn’t certain how they were expecting to get anything done this way. Or perhaps the randomness of the torture was meant to be part of it.

On the fourth day, he had a strange reprieve from his torture. He’d just finished being hung from his feet and beaten with a big wooden stick. That one had been kind of amusing, though he wouldn’t describe it as a good time. Oh the stories he would have to bring back home with him.

He lay in his blankets, waiting for the next one, but the door didn’t open again. He was left alone for minute after minute, and was just about falling asleep for a midday nap, when a woman’s voice floated into the room from the other side of the door. “Familiars are not meant to be played with.” There was the faintest hint of disgust to the voice, but that disgust seemed almost completely overwhelmed by curiosity. A number of the Ketri had been curious about him, but that curiosity had been malevolent in its way, something more akin to a cruel child’s glee at being allowed to kill an insect. The curiosity he heard now sounded more like one of his cousins asking what that interesting plant was. It was so utterly benign a tone of voice, that it actually startled him.

“Are you Etty?” He asked, hand reaching out to pet the fish that had become his constant companion.

“That nickname is not one you have earned the right to use.” Was the frosty reply, but even that didn’t sound as threatening as it might have.

He laughed, propping his head up with one hand. “What are you going to do if I keep using it? Torture me?”

There was a moment of silence, and then she said, “I don’t frighten you.” He frowned, trying to decide what he was supposed to say about that, since she’d said it with not the slightest inflection. What could he even say to that? Yes? No? In truth, none of them scared him. He wouldn’t deny he found them sinister, and even creepy, but scary? Once he’d gotten over the pitch blackness of their haze, it had been hard to muster up any such sentiment towards the Ketri who had been visiting him.

“Does it bother you?” He finally asked back. “Or does it please you?”

There was a soft laugh from his new companion. She ignored his question, but it didn’t sound like she was avoiding answering it. If anything, it did not seem to cross her mind that it was possible for him to affect her emotions in any way, and therefore the question was not even worth answering. “You may call me Etklawen, Hytan.”

His face scrunched slightly with displeasure, and he almost snapped that he didn’t have to listen to her, but then it dawned on him that she was the only one of his tormentors who had actually been trying to converse with him. Not one-sidedly talking at him like he was an object or pet, but actually trying to communicate, so he decided to try something. “And you can call me Shodrit, Etklawen. That’s my name. Not Hytan.”

There was another short silence before she spoke again. “You did not call me Etty.”

He blinked at the ceiling with a half-frown. “Did you want me to?”

She gave that soft laugh again that seemed to declare he was the most interesting thing she’d observed in a while. “No, but you did not strike me as an obedient pet.”

“I am not one of you.” He said, coolly. “I see no reason to bite a hand offered to me in friendship.”

Her voice was scornful as she said, “A pet cannot be a friend.”

Come to think of it, it was almost surprising that she even knew what the meaning of the word ‘friendship’ even was. It didn’t seem to be a concept he’d noticed among the Ketri, and he couldn’t imagine they had such relationships with anyone outside of their demented clan. “That’s right.” He answered. “Friendship requires we be equals, at least that’s how it works among the Hytan. You gave me your name and gave me leave to use it. I have done the same. You allowed us to be equals.”

She surprised him then by giggling, a bright, almost tinkling sound. “That is not how the other toys have seen it. My name was simply something to call me by as they either begged for mercy or spat their rage and fear.”

He shrugged, though it wasn’t as though she could see it. “You haven’t given me reason to do either, yet.”

After another silence, she said, “Perhaps I should attempt to remedy that during our next meeting. Until then, Shodrit.” He started. They hadn’t been talking for long, and she was going to leave like that?

He sat up, “And when will that be?”

She didn’t leave him in silence this time to worry that she’d left already. “Not long. Your first hunt will be in a few days. If you survive, we shall speak again.”

“Wait! First hunt? What do you mean by that?” He called out, moving closer to the door and banging on it to get her attention, but the silence that greeted him this time stretched on and on until his next visitor came along.

He tried engaging the other Ketri in conversation, trying to see if he could get more information about this “hunt,” but they simply took that as a sign of him scheming something, and gleefully responded in taunts. Really, these Ketri. He gave it up before the day was out, instead continuing to count the days. She had said a few days. He’d find out what this hunt was himself then.

True to her word, on the third day since her visit, Shodrit found himself dragged from his cell by the same servants who had brought him to the cell in the first place, his fishy friend escaping in the process and disappearing down the hall. These servants were different from the ones who brought the pieces of bread and bowl of stew that served as his meals, but they might as well have been the same. They never said a word, never reacted to his comments. He’d even threatened to use his powers to kill one once to no reaction whatsoever. Perhaps they knew, as he did, that even if he killed all of them, it would be like nothing more than a tantrum to the Ketri. He’d be brought back before the end of the day, and the servants would simply be replaced with different ones, just as quiet and expendable.

They washed him roughly and dressed him in fresh clothes, and before he knew it, he was being ushered out one last door and into the open air. It took a bit for him to adjust. After having been kept in such deep darkness for so long, even the cool sunlight straining to reach over the tall mountaintops surrounding the mansion felt unusually bright. He took a deep breath of the fresh breeze, and blinked the sunspots from his eyes. Unbidden, a smile blossomed on his face. Freedom.

When he’d arrived at the property, he had been too distracted to take in his surroundings. He was now of the mind to see everything. In front of him was an expanse of trees that would have seemed endless if not for the massive, craggy mountains that seemed to ring the property on all sides. Ketri Valley. It was said that the mountains themselves would reach out to shred any flying intruders, and the remnants of the lost would have littered the deceptive passageways through those mountains, if they were not devoured by the offspring of old familiars left to run wild for generations. The description had struck him with awe as a boy, but from where he was standing, the near-endless forests looked lush and vibrant, the towering mountains feeling more like protective guardians and welcome shade than harbingers of death. He could understand why anyone would want to make their home here, as long as they could stand it being constantly a bit dark and cool. He glanced behind himself to see the mansion, which they were at the back of. It was a tall, sprawling building that looked as though it could have been its own city. There were windows everywhere, each one a work of art comprised of thousands of smaller shards of glass, arranged into colorless murals, not a one like in design. And yet very few of those windows were free to let light or in, most closed and covered in thick, dark curtains. He coughed a little laugh. He’d only been here a week, and the dramatic windows seemed like a statement from the Ketri. That they could let the light and the beauty in if they wanted to, but only sane demons would do that, and they weren’t going to be lumped in with the likes of those.

Someone touched his arm, and he jerked away in surprise, only to see a smaller boy, swaying on his feet and looking terrified. The boy was dressed in a smaller version of his own clothes, but Shodrit could see wounds on the boy’s back, one on his chest, and chafing on his wrists and ankles. He guessed that the boy hadn’t been subjected to the same treatment he had, as he knew others’ injuries lasted longer than his, but still, he felt rage bubbling up in him at the idea of this small boy being hurt for the amusement of the Ketri.

He knelt down in front of the boy and placed a hand on his shoulder, closing his eyes. It took only a moment to heal the boy’s wounds, but he was reaching for something a bit more…. His concentration was disrupted, “You shouldn’t do that.” A woman’s somewhat timid voice piped up, sounding at once both irritated and anxious.

He looked up at her, realizing she was also dressed the same, and the three of them weren’t the only ones. A group of about twenty non-Ketri were gathered, each dressed in a plain white shirt and grey trousers. A brief scan of them told him that all of them were harboring injuries of some sort, but even if he hadn’t been able to see that, they were all visibly scared. Several were already making their way into the forest.

“Why not?” He asked, standing up from the boy, who had stopped swaying and was now staring at him with wide-eyed amazement.

“You should save your strength for the hunt. However strong you think you are, whatever powers you have, you’re going to need all your strength if you want to get through this day.” The lady said, pulling the little boy away from him. “So keep your false hope and pity to yourself.”

“Trying to help is false hope and pity now?” He asked, finding this lady’s attitude exacerbating that little bubble of anger he’d felt at first seeing the boy.

“Yes.” She said. “You might be able to heal him once, but you can’t help, really. You can’t protect him the next time his master decides to whip him. You can’t escape, yourself, much less help the rest of us escape. You might not even be strong enough to survive this hunt. And you certainly aren’t strong enough to stop someone else dying today.” She pulled the child further away from him, and started heading for the forest.

“What do you mean? What exactly is this hunt?” He asked, more exasperated and confused now than before.

She shook her head and didn’t answer him, and he didn’t have time to pursue her further, because a familiar voice caused his hands to ball into fists. “Welcome to your first hunt, Hytan.” He glared up into the face of the man who had kidnapped him, meeting those condescending crimson eyes with hate. The older demon wasn’t far from him, holding a cane in his hand that Shodrit knew held a thin sword. “You are free to go.”

Shodrit narrowed his eyes. “You’re letting me go?”

The Ketri spread one of his hands out in front of him. “Do you see anyone stopping the other toys from leaving?”

“I am not a toy.” Shodrit snapped.

The man tilted his head dismissively. “That is what they all say at first. Go on, prove me wrong. Escape. You have a chance today.” It was easy to guess what this was, considering they were calling it a hunt. Setting the slaves free just to catch them again. Or maybe worse. He wanted to retort that he wasn’t going to play their sick games, but he had to. If there was a chance for him to escape, he had to try.

Choking down his anger and frustration, Shodrit turned on his heels and ran into the forest.

From the mansion, it appeared as though the mountains were all equally far apart from the property, so instead of trying for a specific direction, he first caught up with another one of the captives. “Hey!” He called, to a small man who might have been a bit older than him.

“Shhh!” The man hissed back, desperately, and shooed Shodrit away. “Be quiet. And stay away from me.”

Shodrit hesitated for a second, then kept moving closer, though he lowered his voice. “Look, maybe we can help each other. I’m a Hytan. Their magic doesn’t work on me. I can heal and protect you, if you lend me some of your experience. You’ve done this before. You must have an idea of how to get out of here, or at least where not to go.”

The man snorted. “It’s obvious who you are, if you still think this is about escaping. I have no idea how to escape. The first couple times, I was just like you. I looked everywhere, tried everything, but no matter what you do, no matter how good you are at tracking your location, you’ll never get any closer to those mountains. Remember. They call it a hunt. This is for them to hunt us down, to track us, compete with each other to play with us and learn to capture us without their powers. And if you’re the Hytan, most of them will be looking especially for you.” The man stopped and finally looked at Shodrit, grabbing his arm and shaking it, face utterly serious. “Don’t try to escape. Save your strength, collect food for when you get hungry, and either fashion a weapon or figure out how to become invisible.” He then pulled away. “And if you really want to help any of us, stay away from us. The Ketri find it easier to track a group than individuals. You’ll only be putting us in danger.”

The man turned and kept going, and this time, Shodrit did not follow him. He wasn’t anywhere near ready to give up hope, but he sensed some truth in the other demon’s words. If no one had escaped before, it wasn’t going to be good enough to use traditional methods to find his way out. Instead, for today, he would follow the man’s advice. Taking a deep breath, he trudged deeper into the forest, away from the direction the man had gone. The optimistic sense of freedom the landscape had given him earlier, now did look bleak and terrifying. The trees were unfamiliar to him, with fat green leaves and oozing trunks, but he now had an eye out for anything that could be used as food or turned into a weapon. Ripping a piece of his shirt off, he grabbed a handful of berries and wrapped the cloth around them, stuffing it into the band of his pants. Pulling a loose branch from the ground, he stripped it of whatever splinters he could pull off with his hands, healing the scratches and cuts his hands took on instantly. It was a bit unwieldy, but it had a pointy end, and a little heft to it. If the point of this hunt was for them to learn how to kill without their powers, they should have weapons on them – weapons for him to relieve them of.

He went deeper and deeper into the forest, holding his stick ready and collecting whatever looked edible. A rustle in the trees caused him to whip around, just in time for him to raise the branch to defend himself. A minor demon came flying at him. He barely got a chance to look at it, before slamming the stick into its face. It went flying into a nearby tree, and fell to the ground, thrashing slightly. Jumping over to it, he jammed the pointy end of the stick into its body. He squinted down at it, noting that it was a small thing. In fact, it looked like a hemling – a round, fuzzy, black creature with four short legs. They were a very common, but normally harmless pest that usually ate smaller demons and poisoned the many magical plants more sophisticated demons cultivated for potions. This one didn’t look so harmless. It was still twitching a little in death, but he could clearly see that it was larger than average, with sharp teeth and spikes instead of fur. He coated his stick in its blood. He wasn’t sure it would do anything, but from what little he knew of the Ketri, there was a chance it would be toxic to anyone besides himself.

It wasn’t the last minor demon he faced, as he continued deeper. It seemed the rumors were true: the remnants of old familiars ran free in these woods, for every minor demon he came across was some perversion of a more common and relatively weak creature he normally gave little thought to. Still, they weren’t particularly difficult opponents, so long as he didn’t let them catch him off-guard. They were not the opponents he was ready and waiting for. It took longer than he expected for one of the Ketri to show up. Stealth had never been his strong suit.

He was just starting to get hungry, sitting down on a stump and unwrapping his fruit when a small female came hurtling through the trees, wielding what looked like a massive fork. Of course the Ketri didn’t have the decency to use normal weapons. Snatching up his stick, Shodrit parried her strange fork-thing, and smacked her between the eyes with the blunt end.

She staggered back, but did not drop her weapon as he had hoped she would. She had short, white hair, and pink eyes, and he thought she could almost be described as cute. Then she ruined the impression by smiling at him in an almost sickly sweet fashion. Her voice came out oily, and smooth, and with a start, he noticed she sounded much older than she looked. “Not bad, Hytan.” She said quietly. He was getting kind of tired of being called “Hytan” as if that was all he was. “I see they raise you to be strong, even here, where your magic is useless.”

He scowled at her. “I could have killed you just then.”

She laughed. “With that?” She gestured dismissively at his stick, which was now sticky with the blood of the minor demons. “Unfortunately for you, my dear, I am much too old to allow a thing like that to pierce my flesh.” She lunged for him again, and he just barely managed to wedge the stick between the tines of her fork, blocking the strike, but incompletely. The tines scraped his arms, and he almost dropped his stick, which would’ve send the fork straight through his head. She was much better than the two young Ketri who had tried to kill him earlier in the week.

She withdrew her weapon almost immediately, looking oddly satisfied. This only served to make Shodrit angry. “Unfortunately for you, my magic isn’t as useless as you think.” The cuts on his arms healed without a moment’s delay. “And it seems to me, that rather than my being raised to be strong, you Ketri raise yours to be weak.”

He expected that to anger her back, but she only laughed again, eyes blazing with vicious approval. “Indeed. The current generation is rather pathetic aren’t they?” She lazily swung her massive fork around in circles, looking comfortable as she pleased. “I expect those who haven’t already passed will soon be disposed of. If more than half of them survive, it will be a wonder.” Her tone was one of disgust. “But that is why we have these hunts, you see. And you are exactly the sort of deliciously strong prey to weed the strong from the weak.” Her flippant attitude dropped for a moment. “As long as you don’t do foolish things like show mercy.” She moved closer in an instant, and Shodrit swung his weapon, but she merely stabbed it into the ground with her fork, examining him carefully. “Come, come, Hytan. The blunt end? No one would blame you for dispatching some of your attackers as an act of self-defense.”

He jerked backwards, letting go of his stick rather than allowing it to keep him uncomfortably close to her. “You want me to kill other Ketri?” He asked, confused.

She raised her white eyebrows at him. “My my. They taught you much, but did not care to teach you about us, did they? Did you really think we became the right hands of the demon emperors only because of our magic?” He blinked at her. It had never occurred to him to think otherwise, but it was now striking him that the Ketri he had met so far had all been relatively young and not exactly skilled fighters, not at all like the older ones who had attacked him and his cousins, succeeding in capturing him in a matter of minutes.

He hesitated to respond and she just laughed again, pulling her fork from the earth and resting it against her shoulder. “I do hope you don’t disappoint, Hytan. You show such… promise.” And then she left, just like that. Shodrit reached for his stick, but there was something disconcerting about the way she was simply walking off like he didn’t matter much beyond whether he could kill off the weak. There was that anger, again, but this time he wasn’t sure if it meant he wanted to go after her and make her pay for her arrogance, or spare the Ketri just to spite her. Neither options really pleased him. It felt like these damn Ketri had trapped him into playing their game.

He lifted his head to stare up at the bits of the sky he could see through the trees. He had no idea how far from the mountains he was now, and how much longer he would be hunted. He swallowed the berries the woman had interrupted him from eating, and rested for a moment, before moving on.

It seemed as though the woman had left some mark drawing the other Ketri to him, because not long after, he began bumping into more of them. He relieved a younger boy of a knife, killing the boy’s bird familiar, knocked a slightly older girl unconscious, traded in his knife for a longer sword after stabbing one. None of them seemed to be as old or experienced as the woman he had fought earlier, as if the older Ketri were deliberately avoiding him to give the younger ones their go. He couldn’t bring himself to kill those he could incapacitate, but he killed their familiars whenever he got the opportunity. Most of them seemed to only have one or two.

The sun began to set, air cooling just a bit too much for comfort, and he could feel the exhaustion settling into his bones. This entire experience was turning into a bit of a slog. Kill minor demons, beat the Ketri who came for him, repeat. A scream to his right shook him from his tired thoughts.

“Help!” A man’s voice yelled.

He’d forgotten he wasn’t the only prey in the forest. Without thinking about it, Shodrit found himself tearing through the forest to the sound. He reached a small clearing, to find the green-eyed Ketri he recalled talking to Etklawen the first day pinning a man under his foot. A rope was wrapped around the other demon’s neck, held taut by the Ketri, who turned to look at him as he entered.

“Let him go!” Shodrit demanded, leaping forward with his sword. The green-eyed Ketri just rolled over, somehow maintaining his foot in the man’s back and the tension of the rope around his neck. They landed in the same position they’d been in before, his victim gasping for air as it had all been knocked from his lungs. The Ketri otherwise ignored Shodrit, wrapping the rope a couple times around the man’s neck, and then tying the ends of it to a tree branch. The Ketri pulled a sword from his hip and drove it into the man’s shoulder, and deep into the trunk of the tree, so the man would be pinned there.

The roar of pain that the other man gave drowned out Shodrit’s own roar of rage. He swung at the Ketri with his sword, seeing red, but the taller demon just dodged to the side and parried the blade with his naked hand, reaching for Shodrit’s wrist with his other hand and twisting it so he had to drop the sword. Shodrit snapped down with his other hand, forcing the Ketri to let him go, then quickly collected the sword and retreated warily. This one was strong. Perhaps stronger than the woman he had faced earlier. Two rodents suddenly appeared at the Ketri’s feet, chittering quietly and looking at Shodrit, but the Ketri ignored them.

“You are not my prey.” The green-eyed bastard told Shodrit, calmly.

“I don’t care. You let him go.” He snarled back, before attacking again. The Ketri didn’t seem to mind that he was unarmed and his hand badly cut from his first parry. He got in close to Shodrit, pulling another rope from his clothes to try and wrap around Shodrit’s neck or extremities, but Shodrit kept moving so he wouldn’t be an easy target. He was not caught off-guard again, the two of them circling each other as they danced back and forth. At last, Shodrit saw an opportunity and allowed the Ketri to wrap the rope around his left arm, yanking it from the other man’s hands. His opponent barely blinked, simply whipping out a knife and throwing it into Shodrit’s side. Shodrit grunted in pain, but the other man’s movement had left his lower body exposed, and Shodrit finally got a deep slash into the Ketri’s leg, nearly slicing through it entirely.

The Ketri fell, leg unable to hold his weight any longer, and Shodrit took the opportunity to kick him in the gut. He unwrapped the rope still coiled around his arm and tied both the Ketri’s wrists together and to a tree, before turning to help the man. He put his own sword down as he pulled the other sword free, healing the other prisoner, who had long since lost consciousness, and untying him. His jaw clenched as he tried to determine what other injuries he could heal at the moment, only to hear a hiss from above them in the tree.

He’d let his guard down, fool that he was. A large snake demon the size of his entire arm was glaring down at them through the branches. It raised its head to strike, and perhaps stupidly, Shodrit’s arm shot forward to grab it by the neck, yanking it from the tree and holding its head away from him. The thing thrashed wildly, but he just wasn’t in the mood today. He turned to pick up his sword and dispatch the creature, when he caught sight of something on the other edge of the clearing: the glitter of brilliant crimson eyes. The old bastard who’d kidnapped him was watching for his amusement. Baring his teeth furiously, Shodrit leaned back and hurled the snake at those crimson eyes before he could get a better look at its owner. To his surprise, instead of the older demon, a girl stepped out of the trees. She simply reached up and plucked the snake from the air by the tail, as if it was as simple as catching a ball.

The snake gave a shriek that could only be one of gut-wrenching pain, but Shodrit was confused. Ketri were supposed to kill other demons with a single touch, he didn’t see anything happening to the snake… and then a chunk of flesh fell from the snake’s tail. He watched with wide-eyed horror as fissures seemed to spread all across the snake’s body, flesh splitting as if it were so much crumbling stone. From where the girl had touched it, the snake’s body was ripping itself apart, bones cracking, blood leaking from every crack. It fell to the ground as the tail crumbled in her grasp, but continued to writhe in pain for a while afterwards. The process was slow, and clearly excruciating, the snake turning into pieces of sinew and bone in a pool of blood before his eyes.

Even though he knew she couldn’t do that to him, Shodrit took a step back. The girl was also watching the snake, but her expression was completely blank, not at all reflecting the horror Shodrit felt. When at last, the snake finally gave up its grasp on life, the girl reached down, picked up a piece of it, and popped it into her mouth.

“What are you doing!?” He almost yelped.

She tilted her head as she looked at him, pausing in her chewing. She was pretty in a creepy sort of way, soft, dark grey hair falling across her delicate features, but there was an emptiness to her expression, as if she was only mildly curious about him because that was the only emotion she could muster up. It was odd to see this clear apathy in the eyes that were almost identical to his captor’s in every other way. “It’s dinnertime.” She said, as if that explained everything. Her voice was familiar, though he didn’t remember her as one of his torturers.

He frowned, trying to place it, even as she continued picking up the bloody pieces of snake, putting some in her mouth, while gathering others into her hands. She stood, and then walked closer to him, unhurried. He took a couple more steps back, but his mind knew that she could hurt him that way, and she didn’t seem to have any weapons on her. His pride eventually made him stand his ground, and when he opened his mouth to shout at her, she flicked a piece of snake into his mouth.

He almost choked on it, but then swallowed it by instinct, gagging as soon as it had gone down. It tasted like blood and not much else. “Stop that.” He gasped. “Why are you eating that?!”

She tilted her head at him again, “It’s dinnertime. We feed our pets.”

“But that’s raw. And disgusting.” This was probably the weirdest conversation he’d had with a Ketri.

This assessment was apparently odd to her, as she asked, “What do Hytan eat, then?”

He squinted at her, and then it hit him. That voice. “Et…klawen?”

She smiled then, just a little, and suddenly her fishes were flying in from different sides of the clearing, gathering around her, each taking its share of the leftover snake in her hands. “Shodrit.” Two of the fish settled on her shoulders, the rest were floating in the air, looking at him.

She moved just a little closer, and then suddenly kicked one leg out from under him, causing him to almost fall on his face. He didn’t manage to give more than a shout of surprise, before she was on top of him, pulling his arms behind his back. He didn’t feel a rope or chain wrapping around him, but it was as though his arms were bound together. He wriggled a little to scowl up at her. She crouched in front of him, and touched her blood-soaked fingers to his chin, leaving a sticky residue on his face.

The look in her eyes was no more malicious than it had been before. In fact, there was a sort of soft delight to her expression now. “I so rarely get to touch anyone’s face. How lovely.”

“Untie me.” He snapped, jerking his face away as best he could.

She picked him up and slung him over her shoulder. “I’m glad you survived.” She told him. “Shall we play again when you wake up?”

He struggled. “What do you mean when I wake up…” But he felt his consciousness unnaturally fading as she carried him away.

Chapter Three: Walls

Shodrit was not woken up for his daily round of torture the next day, and when he awoke, he was in the utter dark. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, and realizing that no one had come to torture him was almost frustrating. He had no idea what time it was, and was fuming about the events of the previous day. He scrambled up from his blankets, groping at the walls. He’d never been entirely in the dark since the beginning of his captivity, thanks to Etklawen’s familiar. Thinking of her slinging him over her shoulder like a dead animal made every charitable feeling he’d had about her evaporate entirely.

He managed to avoid tripping over the chamber pot and to find his way to the door, or at least the cracks that seemed to outline a door. He’d never realized before how thick the door must have been for it to even block light from coming in through the cracks. He slammed a fist against the door, and then pushed both palms against it with so much force, he expected to go stumbling back. Instead, the door gave a little squeak, and gave.

Shodrit almost lost his balance and fell head-first into the maid waiting for him. He hadn’t seen her before, and it didn’t escape his notice that her uniform had sections that almost looked like padded armor, and she had a knife on her belt. She had dark, short hair, and was a little shorter than him. She caught him as he fell with one arm and deftly pushed him back to his feet. When he caught his surprise and did his instinctive check for injuries, he noted that she had fewer injuries than he’d seen on the other servants, and even the ones he saw seemed like nothing more than bruises. She had perfect posture and a blank, but faintly condescending expression as she briefly surveyed him, and then looked straight ahead, as if he weren’t there. “Master Hytan, you have been invited to take tea with Mistress Etklawen.”

“Tea?!” He laughed incredulously. The nerve of that woman. The nerve of the Ketri in general. After everything they had done to him, they were daring to act as though they were a civilized people?

“Yes, tea. The young miss enjoys the custom when she is home.” The maid’s calm attitude was irritating him, but he tried to keep a level head, thinking through what this change meant.

Taking a deep breath, Shodrit tried to probe, “And I’m just allowed to have tea with her?”

“It is the right she has earned.” The maid’s expression and tone were unwaveringly stiff.

Shodrit frowned. Right? For capturing him? Was he going to be her permanent plaything because she’d caught him during the hunt? That didn’t make sense, considering what the old bastard had said on his first day. He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

The maid cut him off before he could ask a clarifying question. “Your kind never do, at first.” Though her expression didn’t change much, Shodrit heard half a sneer in her voice, and he bristled slightly.

“My kind? And what exactly is my kind?” He asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

“Pets. Toys.” She explained, bluntly, still looking straight ahead.

Shodrit lunged forward and slammed her into the wall, elbow pressing into her throat, as he used his powers to exacerbate her physical weaknesses, limiting her movement. She didn’t have many useful weaknesses, but a weak left ankle and an overtaxed right elbow were just right for his purposes. He barely saw her as he snarled, “And what are you? Serving the Ketri willingly, even knowing what sort of monsters they are. You’ve offered yourself up as a slave, and what, I’m the laughingstock for my own mistreatment?”

She made a choking cough, but her left hand snatched up the knife on her belt and slashed him across the chest. He jumped backwards in alarm, but the cut had been light and healed almost instantly. She used her free hand to dust off her skirts, coughing once more, but deriding him with her eyes. “You really are no different from any of the other pets.” She said, with half a coughed laugh, still holding the knife in her left hand. “It never occurs to you people to question, what sort of demons would agree to stay locked in Ketri Valley, loyally serving masters who would take pleasure in killing us if it was not against their rules.” She stood up straight, and Shodrit found himself unsettled by the look in her eyes. It didn’t hold the overt sadistic light of the Ketri, but there was a cold calm there. “I am not old, Hytan. But you cannot kill me. You cannot even hurt me. We are the descendants of an old familiar. We were made strong, and I am stronger than many Ketri. Do not waste our time on useless anger. Mistress Etklawen is waiting.”

She turned her back on him and moved down the dark hallway, seeming quite unconcerned about checking whether or not he followed. He hesitated for a moment, but her posture convinced him she was quite confident about her previous statements. There was no point fighting. He gritted his teeth and ran to catch up to her.

~~~

He looked angry. Etklawen surveyed Shodrit with her usual blank expression, as the maid pulled a chair out for him to sit across from her.

He scowled at the maid, but sat and then turned that scowl on her.

She waited for him to say something, but he just glowered at her in sulky silence. She looked up at her maid and tilted her head, dismissing her. The woman left immediately. Still, Shodrit said nothing.

Etty took a sip of her tea, having poured a cup for him the moment she’d heard the knock on the door. After another long silence, him staring resolutely at the window, she asked, “Do you dislike the practice of taking tea?”

That got an immediate response. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“I dislike jokes.” Etty said, flatly.

“You expect me to drink this?” He picked up the cup and splashed it against the floor. Etklawen poured a new cup for him.

“Why not?” She asked.

“It’s poison.” He said, clearly flabbergasted.

“It is?” Etty stopped and looked at her cup.

Shodrit stuttered for a moment. “You… didn’t know?” He made a noise in the back of his throat she didn’t quite understand, “That is-” He stopped there.

Etklawen watched him. Even angry with her, he had believed her on instinct. And even after his first hunt, his mind was… like an outsider’s. Nothing in his eyes had really changed, though he seemed more aggressive than she had observed of him through her fish. “Ketri cannot be poisoned. I simply chose the herbs from the forest I found most pleasing to my taste.”

“You took the herbs from the forest?”

“Where else would I get them from?”

Shodrit opened his mouth, and then hesitated. After a long moment, he picked up his cup and sipped it. “Your taste is poor.” He said. “There are some nice berries in the forest that may serve as a nice snack. This tea is bitter.”

She leaned forward. “What should I use to make the tea less bitter?”

“Use less leaves and don’t leave them in the water so long if you’re going to use boiling water.” He stopped, and looked down at himself, suddenly putting his cup down. “You didn’t use… whatever ‘right’ you earned just so I could improve your tea.”

“I did, though.”

He stared at her. She stared back, uncertain what his desired response was. She hadn’t taken a particular interest in him for any defined reason she could yet elocute. It was just something about his eyes. Clear and fierce, despite the softness to his features. He’d justified that interest so far, in their momentary conversations. It was like he was trying to understand. Perhaps it was because the Hytan were too young. The other pets had known better than to try to place themselves as equals. They had begged, cried, threatened, even wheedled, but Ketri were monsters to them. They learned quickly that attempting communication was futile, and eventually they all broke. The broken toys were the most boring of all, and she had taken interest in pets like Shodrit before, only to be disappointed as time passed. He had yet to prove he would be different. It was only her hope.

“Are you- no. The others said you were… what was it? Special? Something about being violent when you were bored.” She had heard them through her fish. It was an accurate assessment, she supposed.

She shrugged. “All Ketri are violent when bored. I am simply more easily bored than most.”

“Except by me?”

“Time will tell.”

He frowned at her, but she still had no clue what he was looking for. She spoke when necessary, and she hadn’t taken enough of an interest in him to want to know much about him personally. She wanted to see what he had to say himself. That would reveal far more than any petty questions about his past. “Does this tea taste good to you?”

“Ketri have not much sense of taste.”

“That wasn’t what I asked. I asked if it tasted good to you specifically, Etklawen.”

Ah. So he was attempting the personal touch to get her to help him escape. Her hope began to flag. She sighed and stood, turning to the giant window in her room. Her family had often wondered why she had never chosen her own personal plaything from among the various sentient demons they had captured over the years. Most that were strong enough enjoyed having something smart enough to experiment with or at least pass the time between assignments with, but Etty had always killed any prospective pets as soon as her father attempted to grant them to her. This was why. Fear bored her. Petty attempts at emotional manipulation did too. She was better off mimicking outside customs to pass the time than watch one boring demon after another try all the same things. “I had thought you, at least, might be strong enough to be interesting.”

There was a pause as if he was thinking of something more prudent to say, but when she turned to look at him, she saw nothing but confusion. “Why would strength make me more interesting? Surely you’ve seen strong demons before.”

She swooped forward and reached out with her hand. He jerked back in his heavy seat, but only managed to barely grab her hand as the tips of her fingers brushed against his chin. He stared at her, more astonished than alarmed.

“You’re not dead, even with my fingers on your face, so you’re not scared when I reach out to touch you. Do you really think any other pet could say the same?”

She expected him to get angry at her calling him a pet again, but instead he just looked at her, hand still on her wrist. “Is that why you sent your fish to me? I’m a Hytan, and you can’t hurt me. You’ve never seen my kind up close before, so you were curious for a moment.”

She tilted her head. He hadn’t let go of her wrist. “Of course.”

He laughed, and it startled her. This wasn’t one of his previous scoffs or dismissive little chuckles. This was a proper laugh. No one ever laughed at her. She felt her eyes curve in a smile. She liked the sound. It was an outsider’s sound she had always envied.

He opened his eyes to look at her and stopped abruptly, letting go of her hand. Her own smile immediately dropped with the suddenness of the shift.

“Why were you smiling?” He asked, as if she’d personally offended him by doing so.

“Why were you laughing?”

“Why can’t you ever just answer a question instead of moving on as if you already answered it telepathically or something?”

“Most of your questions are boring and mean boring things about you.” She didn’t hesitate to answer if it would get him to answer hers. “Why were you laughing?”

“Why is it important to you to know?”

She scrunched up her nose for a moment and 3 of her fishes flew from corners of the room to settle soothingly on her shoulders and head. The one on the window sill tilted on its side to look at her in a funny way. She took a breath. “Answer the question.”

There was a sharpness in how he looked at her now, and she thought for a second he might retort, but he just took a small breath and said, “Relax. It wasn’t that important. I just thought it was ridiculous for a moment. I’ve always heard Ketri were these mythic horrors, driven so by bloodlust that your ability to speak itself was a quirk of the chasm. Yet here you are, a Ketri who sent her familiar to watch me out of such an ordinary, petty curiosity, like a child might watch a shiny new beetle. It felt silly. That’s all.”

Silly.” Must be some way of saying ridiculous or foolish.

“Yes, silly. Me, and everyone else, not you. For mythologizing all of you. Deranged and aggressive, sure, but mythic horrors? No.” He flapped his hand a bit. “So you can relax. I wasn’t making fun of you, and I wasn’t trying to insult you by calling you silly. I apologize if I offended you.”

She didn’t have much to say to that, not having been offended at all, nor having any idea what one did with an apology. She was fairly confident no one had ever apologized to a Ketri before at all. They certainly didn’t apologize to each other, though she understood the concept.

He seemed to pick up on her complete ambivalence. “Were you offended?”

“No.”

“Oh. You just seemed… stuck on the word.”

“It was simply unfamiliar to me.”

He stared up at her again, as she stood there, hands now clasped in front of her. “Silly?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know ‘friendship’ and ‘jokes,’ but not ‘silly?'”

“In what way are the concepts related?”

He looked at a loss for words, mouth slightly agape at her, before he finally snapped, “Why did you smile when I laughed?”

Now who was asking questions without answering any? “Because I liked it.” Wasn’t that fairly self-evident?

No answer arrived from that, though it wasn’t as though she could have thought of one herself. Finally she said, “Are you not going to explain the word silly?”

He barked a laugh, but it wasn’t the full bellied one she’d liked so much earlier. “Truthfully, I can’t think of the precise definition. Conversation with you is awkward.”

“Yes.” Outsiders had always made it clear that conversations with Ketri was awkward in general, and she in particular wasn’t the sort to maintain a single thread of conversation if it didn’t interest her.

He took another sip of her tea reflexively, and then grimaced and poured it, this time, back into the pot.

“Don’t you have anything to eat with this?”

“I’m aware it’s common to pair it with food in the outside world, but I don’t enjoy adding my meals to teatime.”

“What do you Ketri snack on anyways?” His anger now seemed entirely dissolved, though she suspected he’d soon remember it.

“We don’t partake of snacks. Food is sustenance, nothing more. I’m peculiar enough for drinking this ‘leaf water’ for pleasure.”

“I see.” His dissatisfaction with that answer puzzled her slightly. “Is there anything at all you Ketri partake of that is not strictly necessary for survival?”

“No.” Her response was matter of fact. “Survival takes enough effort as it is. What do Hytan do that is not in some way a reflection of your desire to survive?”

He thought about it seriously for a moment. “I think our definition of survival differs. In a way, from your perspective, our relationships are just as necessary to our survival as weeding out the weak is necessary to yours.” Oh so he’d realized that had he? “And in that vein, any activity we do to foster those relationships are ‘necessary’ to our survival.”

“Ah yes. The pesky outsider need to maintain allies.”

He laughed again, shortly. “No. It’s not about allies. The relationships themselves are the goal, a part of what makes the survival worth it. Does that make sense?”

“No.” She spoke with as little intonation as possible, but she squirmed a little in her seat, not really comfortable with where this was going.

“Why do Ketri survive?” Shodrit asked her.

That question made no sense. She squinted at him.

He sighed, and rephrased. “What is it that you do with your life that makes you wish to fight for survival the way you do?”

She thought about the question a bit, and only deferring her response, she asked carefully, “Is that a question outsiders answer to justify their own existence?”

He looked startled in turn at the question, and seemed to struggle with the answer, speaking in a slow, precise manner. “Not exactly. Not consciously that is. But survival is second nature where I am from. With so much time we do not require to maintain our state of survival, we find reasons to enjoy that state.” She supposed that made sense. Ketri’s own amusements to pass the time largely furthered their chances of making it to their elder years, but she herself had the privilege of not caring if she made it to the upper echelons of Ketri society by becoming aged. Perhaps her own little practice of collecting outsider customs was in its way an attempt to enjoy her current state of survival.

“I cannot answer you.” She finally settled on. “Survival is its own goal. Few of us question whether it’s worthy of its status as a goal at all, and most of those that do question its worthiness do not keep their lives for very long. For my part, I live to kill who I must, and for the rare moments where something catches my interest.”

“I see.” He was quiet for a moment. “Then perhaps you could think about friendship as a relationship where people can catch each other’s interest about something, for longer than just a moment. That is worth far more than the survival itself sometimes.”

She nodded, conceding. She could think about it like that, she supposed. It was an interesting way to think about it, and she liked that. In that view perhaps he might become a friend of hers, if he maintained his current unconcerned attitude. It felt odd waiting to see how long he would stay so casual. Etty gestured at him loosely. “You’ve forgotten that you were angry.”

He shrugged, then picked up the tea pot, before heading to her window to empty its contents. “I haven’t forgotten, it’s just difficult to stay angry with you. You make it difficult to stay angry with any of you Ketri. The ones I’ve met mostly seem like children.” Well, to be fair, most of the ones sent to him had been children. “And you most of all, simply seem….” He paused, staring down at the now empty tea pot. She wished he hadn’t done that. She collected leaves by hand. “You smile when I laugh, ask questions when questions are asked of you, ask an outsider for tips on how to best make your horrible, poisonous tea,” well, that was rude, “and don’t seem to understand the most basic things. Most demons share a baseline for how and why we live. You Ketri certainly don’t have it, you don’t even eat for pleasure. Seeing how much you want that baseline somehow made it clear to me that not having it is pitiful, in its own way.”

Etty raised her eyebrows. “No one has ever dared call us pitiful.”

He let out a huff of breath, as he brought the pot back to her. “It’s hard not to once you realize that your idea of a meal is raw familiar meat and disgusting poison water.”

Still rude, but she didn’t really mind that. She grabbed his wrist as he placed the pot down, standing to pull his arm out from his body. He eyed her, confused as she inspected him. She spoke, while she circled him and lifted his arms, checking his clothes for anything he might have picked up from the forest, his skin for blemishes or filth. When had he last been washed? Was he the perfect specimen of health or was there some other state he was more accustomed to? “Teach me what demons are supposed to eat, then. I am curious whether all our pets find our food as disgusting as you do. I haven’t had many pets of my own, but we are prohibited from feeding most of them, as we cannot distinguish what will kill them from what will not.”

“So you weren’t joking about not being able to tell it was poison, then.” She had said that she didn’t much like jokes. He followed her with his eyes as she continued to thoroughly assess his health. It was nice to be able to do it herself, for once. She shook her head in response, and he added, “Wait, then how do any of them eat? Where have my meals been coming from?” What had they been giving him?

“The familiar-descendants cook for themselves,” she answered, “and for the other non-Ketri within these walls, including pets such as yourself. Father allows them to leave the property to collect ingredients for their own food, and gives them an allowance so long as they agree to feed the others as well.” Finally satisfied, she sat back down, allowing him to do the same.

He sat, but kept his eyes keenly on her. “Don’t you eat what they serve you? Why would you require me to explain how food should taste to you? The stews I’ve been getting have been perfectly acceptable.”

Etty laughed. She loved the weird little questions he asked. “If you can’t feed yourself, you hardly have a reason to be kept alive. Ketri are only fed by their mothers until they reach about 6 years of age, then we must learn to feed ourselves with whatever we can hunt on our own. Serve us? Come now, we are hardly infants that require feeding from others. Pets aren’t allowed to go out and find their own ingredients, or else they’d be forced to do the same.”

When her mirth subsided, she caught a glimpse of Shodrit’s face, and the look on it wiped any amusement from her mind. His mouth was slightly open as he stared at her like she’d grown a second head. He was flabbergasted, that was the only word that really worked for it. Why? She shifted, resisting the urge to clear her throat. What had she said that would be worth that look?

For a long moment, neither of them said anything. But finally, sweet release from the silence, Shodrit began to speak again. Now deadly serious, he began talking at length about food. The varieties that existed outside of the walls of the Ketri estate, the stews they’d been serving him, the customs and ways that his own family had surrounding meals. He spoke without pause, without offering her any questions to make sure she was participating. She had seen some of the way outsiders ate on her own missions and trips, but he painted such a picture for her of warmth and comfort, mixtures of flavors she could hardly imagine and doubted she would be able to taste for herself. He spoke as though the act of something entering his mouth could bring joy itself, and while she only understood joy in the smallest and briefest of moments, she envied the thought of being so pleased by so little a thing.

Their time was up before she realized it, and even as the maid escorted him back to his cell, he was shouting directives at her for which berries he’d tried in the forest that might most serve most similarly as outsider food. The maid seemed to think he was entirely mad, well as she hid it, and Etty wasn’t sure she entirely disagreed.