211 – The Primogenitor’s Blood

Sometimes, Lothazel Casurien of the Primogenitor’s Blood felt like the only sane demon in his homeland.

Spilling blood was good and proper, yes, that went without saying—it was expected from any respectable member of society. But there was a time and a place for such indulgence, and moments before the scheduled arrival of the Sorceress was neither.

All around him, the world trembled as a collection of his people’s greatest warriors fought. Plumes of earth rocketed skyward; the clouds darkened and rained lightning; deafening shockwaves exploded from the clashing of weapons, all of it happening too fast for any non-Titled to track.

The guards posted on the towers of Ochreclast a mile away must have thought the world was ending. Even from such a distance, the destruction threatened to crash against the city’s walls. Only Ifrathel’s barrier contained the carnage. She floated beside him now; they were the only ones not joining in on the fun, which was yet another layer of vexation. Obviously, he wanted to plunge into the fray as well. He just had a shred of self-restraint.

“I don’t believe this will make a good first impression,” Lothazel said to his sister. “We know the Sorceress is culturally human. She likely already sees us as savages.”

“Those would be fighting words, should another of our Blood hear you,” Ifrathel replied. “You dare besmirch the name of the Sorceress by implying she does not bathe in the viscera of her enemies? Raise your weapon for your insolence, cur.”

As always, Ifrathel’s humor was drier than the ashy plains beneath their feet. She wasn’t wholly wrong, though: demonkind worshipped the Sorceress. All five Heroes were respected by every race of the world, but there was an extra depth of pride for those who shared one’s ancestry. The elves adored Naia, the humans Orion, and the demons, of course, Vivisari.

That reverence went double for their own kind, since the Sorceress had been the only one among her party to survive that final encounter—and then had returned a hundred years later, inexplicably more powerful than before. She was their ideal. But also, unfortunately, as human as she was demon.

He patted himself on the back for having the foresight to set the gathering point outside of Ochreclast. Then again, maybe that had only encouraged this debacle, with the collected Titled needing to worry less about collateral damage.

It had started with House Keresi and House Naravi, which any fool with half a brain could have bet on and turned a profit. The two patriarchs’ argument had ended with a boot planted on Primus Naravi’s chest, sending the man flying a quarter mile out into the Ashfields. The assembly had devolved so quickly into an all-out faction war—with various houses picking sides or simply throwing themselves into the brawl for the thrill of it—that Lothazel had almost felt a stir of pride at the sheer bloodlust on display.

If not for how, again: there was a time and place.

“I’m surprised you’re not joining in,” Ifrathel remarked. “I have the city’s defense under control.”

His nose wrinkled. “It’s the principle of the matter. That, and I should be ready to welcome the Sorceress.”

Demons didn’t have a singular ruling family like humans did. Instead, the Primogenitor’s Blood served as the reigning class. As with all of their society, strength determined merit: which families were considered closest to their Primogenitor and deserving of claiming his name stemmed from one’s might. After all, power proved by itself that the ancestor’s blood coursed through your veins—certainly more than a dusty lineage tree in the archives could.

That said, the Casurien family had always been considered first among the Primogenitor’s Blood. There had never been a point in recorded history that someone of his name could not have claimed, inarguably, that he or she was one of the three strongest demons alive. With both him and Ifrathel standing near the peak, if his little sister less so than he, their family was in an especially dominant era.

As such, though he was not a Prince as humans would understand, Lothazel held the duty of receiving the Sorceress.

A hill-sized chunk of stone came flying toward him, debris from the Primus’ fight. Ifrathel plucked it out of the sky and sent it hurtling sideways, saving him the effort of cutting it down.

He pulled out and checked his timekeeper. “It should be any moment—”

On the elevated obsidian platform below, a silhouette popped into existence with a ripple of spatial magic.

“—now.”

Despite everything, Lothazel’s heart skipped a beat as he laid eyes on the robed figure.

He had met the Sorceress a few times before, though it might be more accurate to say that he’d met her team, since she hadn’t spoken back then, neither to him nor to anyone else. The Party of Heroes had slain the Reaper of the Lost Harvest not more than two dozen miles from Ochreclast, and as the head of the Primogenitor’s Blood, he had of course been there to celebrate the achievement, and had interacted with them throughout their quest as well.

Even a distance away—floating in the air as he was—he saw the way she turned in a circle and surveyed the chaos around her. A shiver went up his spine at the emotion on her face. Or rather, the lack of it.

Yes, those are the eyes of a true demon, he thought.

Titled essentially never gathered at this scale; the resulting carnage taking place was unprecedented. While a brawl rather than a fight to the death, it was still a demonstration of the aggregate might of demonkind’s most powerful fighters clashing with each other at full strength.

And yet the Sorceress looked unperturbed. Utterly. She had teleported into the middle of unexplained havoc, where Titled-rank spells and skills were tearing the earth asunder in all directions, and she seemed bored with what she saw.

She waved her staff. Thousands of runes manifested in the air so fast that he—even he, likely the highest of those gathered—couldn’t trace their formation.

“[Zero Point Stasis].”

The faction brawl came to a halt. Although the combatants were scattered in a mile-wide radius, the Sorceress’s spell seized them all at once. The speed with which silence fell over the plains was deeply unnatural. Lothazel himself was spared from imprisonment, as was Ifrathel, but he felt the mana of the spell pulse through the Ashfields like a wave conjured by the Maw of the Abyss—titanic and incomprehensible, an act of nature, of the heavens, of the gods themselves.

He broke out into a cold sweat.

The Sorceress pointed her staff in a seemingly random direction, and mana flared again, a million times weaker but still perceivable. Primus Mizar Keresi appeared the next moment, wrapped in a bubble of energy and frozen with his axe lifted over his head. A blood-crazed grin stretched his features. Primus Naravi materialized next, the leaner man wearing dark colors, equally excited in his expression. For all that House Naravi preferred cloak-and-dagger approaches, they were as model demons as any.

The process continued: the Sorceress scooped up all twenty-one combatants and placed them in a semicircular arrangement around her, each suspended in their own protective sphere.

Then she looked up at Lothazel.

Her red eyes were so profoundly unimpressed, so disdainful of this inconvenience, that another chill went through him.

He wasn’t ashamed to admit to a trickle of fear. But other emotions were the predominant ones.

Truly the daughter of the Primogenitor himself, he thought with amazement. Those ridiculous rumors don’t seem far-fetched, after a demonstration like that.

“Why did I arrive in the middle of a war zone?” the Sorceress asked him. “I didn’t want to be so forceful, but I wasn’t sure what was going on.”

Lothazel spurred himself into motion; he began floating down toward the platform. Ifrathel released the defensive shield she’d erected to protect Ochreclast and followed.

His thoughts ran a thousand miles per second in those valuable moments before he reached the Sorceress.

The show of strength, majestic as it might have been, had left him unnerved. He knew how powerful she was—of course he did. He’d even known the woman had grown stronger in the century she’d been gone; he wasn’t so foolish as to ignore the reports he’d gotten from the human lands, fanciful as they might sound.

But to see it with his own eyes…

The Sorceress had just proved, in less than five seconds, that if all of demonkind united against her, she wouldn’t suffer so much as an injury.

She wouldn’t even tire herself out.

Why?

Why had she made that point so clear? Though it was evident that the Sorceress didn’t enjoy politics, or perhaps the company of others at all, she was still a grown woman with centuries of experience. She understood that such a display would mean something when issued in front of demonkind’s most powerful leaders. Before a significant portion of both the First Blood and the Primogenitor’s Blood.

After all, if an end to the brawl was all she’d wished for, she could have announced her presence in any of a hundred ways—most assembled would have immediately tempered themselves out of simple reverence for the strongest demon in all of history. Those caught up in their duels could have been corrected afterward, individually, without such a display of absolute power.

No, the Sorceress had wanted to send a message.

For what reason? Was she not a peacekeeper?

As Lothazel Casurien of the Primogenitor’s Blood, he found it a very important question to answer with certainty.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t come to a conclusion during his short trip to the ground. His boots met the stone platform, and suddenly he was face-to-face with the Sorceress.

He… had to adjust his gaze a surprising amount downward.

“Apologies, Sorceress. An argument escalated, and my brothers and sisters could not contain themselves. I hope we haven’t irritated you.”

“An argument?” the Sorceress repeated blandly.

She swept her gaze across the twenty-one frozen individuals. It was a bit eerie, the way they’d been captured mid-movement… and that not one of them seemed capable of resisting. Even knowing the incredible power of the Sorceress, surely one of demonkind’s strongest should at least be able to twitch a finger, to force a hairline fracture to appear in the magic she’d employed against so many people at once. He had no doubt all of them were straining with their full might, if just to test themselves.

And yet: nothing.

“It’s safe to release them, then?” she asked. “I was worried they’d been mind-controlled, or something like that. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

The words disoriented him, though he kept that reaction from showing on his face. ‘I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.’ Such a statement shouldn’t have left a respectable demon’s mouth.

But as he and Ifrathel had jested about earlier, the Sorceress was culturally human. Some of the First and Second Blood would refuse to acknowledge that fact, aloud or even in their heads, but he himself wasn’t so foolish. A ruling family couldn’t afford such willful ignorance.

“It was merely overenthusiasm,” he replied.

The Sorceress nodded, turned toward her prisoners, and said, “My apologies. I overreacted.”

She released them. Their movements resumed from where they’d been cut off, but the Sorceress kept protective bubbles surrounding them. Whatever destructive impact might have erupted was instead effortlessly absorbed.

After that, she dismissed the barriers too.

A lot of reactions broke out, most of the noise not words in any proper sense—Mizar Keresi’s roaring laughter seemed to sit on top of the racket.

“Be silent,” Lothazel snapped, voice ringing out across the Ashfields.

They obeyed. Silence returned within seconds, even Mizar’s booming mirth quieting at Lothazel’s tone. He preferred not leveraging his authority, because any dissent would then require correcting, which would have been annoying.

“We’re ready for transport, Sorceress,” he said, smiling at the woman. “We thank you for the convenience.”

“It’s no issue,” came the bored reply. “I count twenty-three of you, though. Where’s the last?”

Lothazel frowned. Ah, yes, the strange one. He still wasn’t sure what to make of that man. He had qualified in the very final position, and yet only a fool wouldn’t recognize how suspicious his performance had been. He’d clearly been masking his true skill.

“I’ve been told he will find his own way to Meridian,” Lothazel answered.

It wasn’t the most ridiculous claim. The human kingdoms were enormous, not to mention how one needed to cross the ocean first, but having skills, spells, artifacts, or some other trick to traverse vast distances hardly defied believability.

Still, not accepting a free trip from the Sorceress seemed strange to him. Even ignoring the convenience of it, who wouldn’t want to witness the Hero of demonkind in the flesh? The woman who had slain seven Cataclysms and supposedly suppressed an eighth within the heart of the human kingdoms, singlehandedly?

Lothazel supposed the man might be visiting family or friends along the way, or had some other task; his suspicions might be overblown. The combination of oddities left him curious, though.

The Sorceress didn’t seem to make much of his answer—she just nodded. Those red eyes retained their implacable apathy. Lothazel imagined if the sky itself fractured and the holy pantheon flew out to challenge her, she wouldn’t so much as tilt her head before raising her staff to meet them.

His heart fluttered. She’s everything I expected her to be.

Perhaps he should give more thought to that idea he’d been entertaining, for when he triumphed in this upcoming tournament. He would have a wish to make of this woman, and the Sorceress was unmarried and eligible. Maybe all it would take was a sufficiently audacious request following an equally impressive performance.

It wasn’t like there was anyone else who could stand at her side. And what a way to guarantee his lineage’s talent.

“Please come closer, everyone,” the Sorceress said to them. “And brace yourselves for the trip. It’s disorienting, the first time. My apologies in advance.”