As dreary and rustic as Leona was, there was seldom a shortage for the sorrows of its denizens to be drowned. Still clad in plate mail armor from head to toe, Gareth Knox trudged through the rain, hoping it would wash away the dreadful stink of elderberries that clung to him after his visit to the cheapest speakeasy he was able to find.

  The past week had been tumultuous for the oathbreaker, to say the least. Since being broken in by the burly royal aide, he had been given a squalid toolshed to call home. It was tucked away deep among the twisting alleys of Leona’s backstreets yet close enough to stay under the aide’s surveillance, for which he was quite grateful. Even being just as penniless as a street urchin, the armor he was cursed to wear attracted the attention of many leering, greedy eyes.

  Although hunger had yet to strike him once again, something made him visit the speakeasy that day. Carrying what little coin Roman had graced him with in the name of refuge, he had spent the better part of the day emptying bottle after bottle of swill, none of which had eased the thirst in his chest. It was only the persistent growls and unscrupulous comments from that bar’s regulars, neighbours of the establishment, that made him take his leave into the downpour.

  Gareth didn’t dare raise his gaze as he waded through the muddy roads, dragging his boots through gravel and refuse which had risen up by lack of good drainage. His eyes which once held hope and valor now wore shame and solemn defeat, a proud statue of a man now corroded by the state of the city. In even as short a time as his, Leona had shown him thieves who stole for survival, murders over minor disputes, rampant corruption, and just how little he could do to stop it. It felt like no way to live, and nor did anyone seem like they wanted to live in this city… which was all the more surprising to him when he heard a shrill call for help.

  It was a young voice, he could tell that much from the way it pierced through the heavy rain that drowned out everything else. Gareth’s first instinct was to rush to its aid, but his feet remained wading in the rain. He dared not even to look up…

  “Is there really a point? Everything in this city goes to damnation anyway…”

  Gareth’s eyes lowered further to his feet, sunken into the growing puddle in the mud. Through those ripples which remained stable for not one moment, there was a reflection. He could’ve barely made it out if he was sober… but inebriation brought forth a new image altogether. Garbed from head to toe in stained armor, and a helmet which reduced his facial features to a shadow of himself, he saw an oathbreaker, twisted and tyrannical.

  “Who… is that… brother…?”

  Another cry pierced through the rain, sending a surge of mixed emotions flooding through the knight. Gareth stomped into the puddle before marching towards the alley in which he had heard the voice. Even without his greatsword, he had other tools at his disposal. Knuckles, boots, armor. Everything was a weapon when used right. The path ahead of him remained blurry through his stupor and the rain, but drunken vigor directed him right to those young cries.

  Within the damp darkness, a middle-aged man lorded over a child. He was adequately dressed to not pass for a beggar, but not enough to be well-off. The nearly empty bottle of whiskey in one hand and leash in the other painted the rest of the picture, a master down on his luck, taking it out on his property. He threatened the child in an abrasive voice, raising the bottle in preparation to throw it.

  Below him, the peculiar child curled into herself. Her eyes were red and throat was hoarse from crying, and the collar around her neck kept her chained to that man. Bruises lined her limbs, which were barely covered by the rags she was desperately clinging to, an excuse for proper clothes. She barely dared to open her eyes for a moment before tightly closing them again when he raised the bottle. She whimpered, expecting the glass to shatter against her skin any moment now. Any second, and every passing moment made the agony of waiting worse. But, the longer she waited, the longer she was left waiting, before a dull sound of glass cracking broke her expectation.

  The bottle never made it to her.

  Gareth stood tall behind the man, his stature easily towering over the older frame. In the shadows of the buildings on either side, only the edges of his form could be easily made out. He slammed the man into the wall, before attacking him with a roar.

  “Murderers, the lot of you! Attacking a defenseless town, how could you?! There were never any zealots! Only farmers, merchants, tailors and craftsmen!”

  Gareth spared no strength on his part. In those brief moments, the middle-aged man didn’t register with him. He saw only his fellow knights, the ones he had fought back against before fleeing. Still, he had held them off for just enough for the little girl to disappear into the nearby forest. All of them appeared in the guise of that man to him, and in a blur of rage he struck them down one after the other.

  The little girl slowly opened her eyes, uncurling herself to witness the one-sided beatdown. They were sweet moments of respite for her, where she could finally stop calling for help. For those brief moments, she didn’t need to hide and cower in fear. The leash which would yank on her neck now lay on the ground, for once not tied and fastened to something.

  She watched on as Gareth struck the man over and over again. It wasn’t a quiet affair, and soon there were more people who had been attracted by their scuffle. Her heart dropped for a moment, but the man whose armor shone in the rain kept roaring and fighting. He was outnumbered, but not overwhelmed. Even when they restrained his limbs and tried to bring him down, the virtue of full armor rendered him more durable than she expected. One by one, anyone within arm’s reach from him fell like flies to his blows. It wasn’t long before the rest of them decided to retreat, dragging their fallen friends away from him. Only then did the knight pause to catch his breath, slouching against a street lamp as wary passersbys avoided his ire.

  “It’s done… They are all dead. All my comrades… they are finally free…”

  Still swayed by the influence of swill and having accomplished his goal, Gareth staggered back towards his meagre toolshed, barely aware of the blue-skinned child who followed close behind him like a duckling following her mother.

  Gareth woke up with a particularly painful headache the next day, or night. The lack of windows and presence of a perpetually closed door made it hard to tell. Even if the shed did have windows, the bleak atmosphere of Leona was not something he preferred to the privacy of darkness. He had apparently slept on his stomach without a care in the world, even electing to ignore using the old, dusty blankets that Roman had graced him with.

  The knight rubbed his eyes, scratching his fingers on his helmet as he did. The slight tinge of pain was refreshing, alerting, even. He sat upright on the cot, spending another minute stretching his arms and lamenting the aching of his back before considering that he should pick up the blankets from the floor. It was only when he reached a hand out to grab the bunched up fabric that he spotted the pair of eyes staring back at him from within.

  “What the–” Gareth quickly looked around for his greatsword, fearing that some sort of animal had invaded the shed.

  The being bundled in his blankets let out a squeak upon seeing him reach for the massive blade, scampering to escape from the comfort of warmth and throwing herself against the shed’s wall. “Please don’t hurt me! I’ll go! I didn’t want to bother you!” she cried out.

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  Gareth was torn between choices upon witnessing the nature of his stowaway – a child with light blue skin and orange eyes, a crude quartet of horns protruding from the front and sides of her head, strangely stubby digits along her hands and feet, and a pair of wings, just big enough to create small drafts. Everything pointed to her being a demon of some kind, and yet, she was still a child. A bruised child, with signs of old injuries lining almost every inch of what wasn’t exposed through the rags she wore.

  “How– Where did you come from!?” Gareth asked, letting the greatsword rest against the wall as it had been. He kept his fingers wrapped around the handle as a caution, but his words were soft. It seemed he was just as shocked as she was.

  “You saved me from that man… he was about to hurt me,” The girl trembled, curling her tail around herself as she took shallow breaths. “You scared everyone away, and told me I could rest here.”

  “…” Gareth was left speechless for a moment. Whatever had happened, had happened while he was still under the influence. He barely remembered leaving the shed yesterday, let alone getting into a fight and taking in a demon child. He placed a hand on his helmet, trying to rub his head to see if that would jog his memory.

  The child could tell he was upset, it was something she had become accustomed to spotting in her time in the overworld. She quietly pushed herself to her feet with support from the wall. “I’ll go now, so please don’t get angry…”

  Gareth could only watch her take a few steps before his priorities changed, and he got up to stop her. A tinge of pain stung him as he walked, but he paid it no heed for the moment. “No need, y-you can stay here. Just… What's your name, first of all?”

  The girl looked up at him with incredulous eyes, stuttering a few times, likely from disbelief, before finally getting it out. “Neh– N– N’elskaerm… I’m N’elskaerm.”

  “Nel… ” Gareth sounded the name in his mind before rolling it in his mouth, failing to comprehend it correctly in both interpretations. There was something about the way she said it that just didn’t come easily to his tongue,

  “My friends call me Nelly!” N’elskaerm piped up, much to his relief.

  “Nelly, that’s much easier. Thanks,” Gareth nodded, it was time to move to the more important questions now. Stuff that he suspected wouldn’t be as easy to wave off… “Where are you from? How did you get here? You look like…” He refrained from completing his sentence, for all of the ways he could word her current state and race felt rather harsh for a child.

  Nelly opened her mouth, but it remained agape for a few seconds. “I’m from Atraxia… Mum and I were stuck in the overworld, and I lost her. I tried to find her but I got caught. They sold me to that other man…” Her voice grew progressively squeakier and more miserable as she continued, but since Gareth remained rather quiet, she kept talking. “He would take me with him to bars… he called me his lucky charm… beat me whenever he lost bets…”

  “For Thened’s sake…” Gareth groaned, his head in his hands as he pieced her situation together. “Atraxia… you’re not even supposed to be in this plane,” He dropped himself back on the cot, leaning back. Everything he had learnt so far about Atraxians suggested Nelly would be nothing but trouble, but a part of him couldn’t reconcile with that school of thought. Not with a child, of all things. “Do you know where you lost your mother? I could help you get back…”

  Nelly shook her head. “I’m bad with places. We were in a village, but I dunno where… I don’t know where here is either.”

  “Right, right,” Gareth nodded, cursing himself for getting caught up in the matters of demons. “This is Leona. It’s… not the best,” He tried to stay optimistic, at least for the sake of keeping up appearances. “You can stay here until we find a way to send you back.”

  Nelly’s face lit up, and she let her tail uncurl from her torso. “Thank you, mister…?”

  “Gareth. Gareth Knox.”

  There was an awkward silence as Nelly made herself comfortable on top of the blankets again, treating them like a messy rug. “What are you doing here, Gareth?”

  “I… uh…” Gareth contemplated, realizing he didn’t have a good answer for her. He didn’t even have a good answer for himself. This had all been an exercise in trust, that he wasn’t sure he was on the right end of. “I was told to come here by someone… an adventurer named Nikolas.”

  “Ni…kolas?” Nelly mouthed the name, her forehead scrunching as if the name invoked some sort of innate anger in her. “What was he like?”

  “What’s wrong?” the knight asked, his curiosity piqued by the meek child’s sudden shift in mood. “He uhh… I think he was a fox. He wore a white mask, purple shirt and brown coat. He also had different colored eyes–” He described the adventurer as roughly as his memory let him recall.

  “ –Blue and purple eyes?” Nelly interjected, her own eyes widening as she scanned his face for any signs of confirmation. Her body language morphed towards hostility again, irises growing smaller, knuckles whitening around her knees, wings spreading out.

  “. . .” Gareth paused, taken aback by her sudden shift. He quietly nodded, confused why this random child he had run into would also know Nikolas. It also brought up a lot more questions about the kitsune himself, but before he had the chance to contemplate, a tantrum was afoot.

  “Dies Irae!” Nelly hissed, her eyes darting to either side of the toolshed. “Where is he!? Do you work for him?” she leapt off the makeshift rug to create more of a gap between them, brandishing her teeth at Gareth like a cornered animal.

  “I don’t know!” Gareth raised both his hands in surrender, surprised by the amount of fight still left in her. “I– I don’t work with him, I don’t even know anything else about him! I just met him once, and he helped me and told me to come here… I’m not lying!”

  Nelly’s expression softened, but she remained on all fours, keeping her back arched and wings spread. She wanted a place to stay more than she disliked Gareth for taking Nikolas’s help.

  “What did he do to you? Is he the reason you got separated?” Gareth asked, slowly letting his arms down in accordance with her body language.

  “Not just to me…” Nelly grumbled, sitting down with her tail curled like a pillow. Her voice turned low again, and she averted her gaze from Gareth. “Dies Irae… is a monster who killed my Papa and destroyed our city.”

  Gareth blinked a few times, fighting his urge to piece things together and the disbelief that they were talking about the same Nikolas. And yet, Nelly had guessed Nik’s irises correctly without him ever prompting her. “You mean in Atraxia…? Your home in Atraxia.”

  Nelly barely moved her head to nod, before adding on with a low mumble. “Papa held him off while Mum and I escaped to the overworld. We only heard his name… and then everything began to break and ruin…”

  “Wha- what was he doing in Atraxia?” Gareth asked again. Nikolas was certainly no ordinary adventurer if he had means to travel between realms, but the story still refused to line up with the merciful adventurer he had encountered.

  Nelly looked up at him with a frown, shaking her head. “Dunno. He just showed up one day, and… then everything went wrong. He was in the city suddenly, and we had to run.”

  “I’m sorry… I truly am,” Gareth felt rather helpless in this situation. He briefly recalled how easily the kitsune had caught his greatsword with one hand mid-swing, which he had then attributed to his own exhaustion and not a combination of innate strength and precision.

  “Not your fault,” Nelly grumbled, “It happened three years ago. Been hiding up here since then…”

  “That aside…” Gareth let out a sigh, deciding to set the heavy topic aside. “I don’t know how to get you back… but as long as you don’t intend to harm anyone nearby, I can let you stay in this space. Deal?”

  Nelly glanced up for a brief moment before returning her focus to the tip of her tail. “I guess… I don’t have anywhere else to go. You’re a weird person, Gareth.”

  “I suppose I am,” Gareth nodded, before getting up and making for the door. “Are you feeling hungry? I’m alright but I can get you something from a restaurant nearby.”

  Nelly’s ears perked up at the sound of food, finally wearing a tiny smile as she nodded.

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