by L. L. McNeil
She’d thought of herself as an equal to the Djinni—in Fallow’s eyes, at least—but now she felt like she was slipping. She needed to kill something big, get a power boost that would put her on par with Lady Tress—or one of her dragons. Then she wouldn’t trail behind quite so much.
‘What types of demons have you encountered?’ Seila asked, curiosity getting the better of her.
Delgo frowned. He looked down at the landscape below with gold eyes narrowed as he thought. ‘I have seen every type that walks this plane. But the ones that destroyed my world were different. A Demon King arose, tore open too many Mirages for us to stop. Waves upon waves of demons flooded in. The Marauder. The Prowler. The Desolation. Too many to count, with too many names. We were overrun. They killed everything living—animals and plants, both. They starved us, sucked up our magic, and we were finished within hours of their approach.’
Seila shivered.
‘I told you, when a Demon King arises, it’s the end of the world.’
Seila still struggled to wrap her head around it. Of all Fallow’s Kouzlo, she was convinced that Delgo was the most powerful. How could a world full of Djinn succumb to demons? No matter how many of them there were?
She didn’t want the same thing to happen here, but a small part of her wanted to see what it was like. Wanted to see whether she could fight back and stop it.
If Delgo couldn’t, then she didn’t stand a chance, of course.
But she wanted to see.
Did that make her evil?
‘I will not let that happen to this world. I will not let it happen to Fallow.’
Seila looked over to Delgo. They were just below the clouds, out of immediate view of most people in the towns and villages below. But the air darkened around Delgo as his emotions grew, as though a storm cloud brewed.
‘It won’t,’ Seila said. And she believed it. She would not let any demon take over, no matter how powerful it was. No matter what she had to do to stop it.
She should be dead. An Elite Demon had ripped her soul from her and left her to die. But she hadn’t died. After surviving that, she could survive anything.
Delgo let out a low snarl before regaining his composure. ‘I know it won’t. I won’t let it.’
Seila nodded and gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. Delgo, like Fallow, and goodness knows how many other Kouzlo, was a refugee here. He’d fled his world as it died, and now this dimension was his home. To have lost his home once, must have been terrible. To lose it twice would be unimaginable. Would he even survive it a second time?
Fallow had said something about Delgo’s magic being linked to life. He took it from everything around him to stay alive. A dead world meant he couldn’t live, surely? He would need to escape through a Mirage to somewhere else, and hope that demons hadn’t taken over that plane, either,
She shivered at the notion.
Travelling between dimensions sounded interesting. Finding other demons and learning their tricks could only make her stronger. But she wanted to travel on her own terms.
‘Seila. Straight ahead.’
Delgo’s sharp voice cut through her thoughts. She looked up to see Sierra flying in circles in the distance. Her white feathers were stark against a thick plume of smoke rising slowly into the air. Below her, Chiddingfold burned.
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