Something was wrong.

  I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself and ignore the feeling.

  I watched the three humans with growing frustration and the first stirrings of panic. Luke’s heartbeats were barely audible. His skin was an open wound, but I feared the ants’ venom even more. That had to be killing him. Annie had managed to drag herself closer to him and press her head against his belly. She was crying softly now.

  Ilse was perfectly healed, so why was she still curled up, covering her head with her hands, trembling and screaming from time to time as if the skavags were still there?

  I grasped my horns in frustration. What was I supposed to do with them?

  I took another deep breath, but the feeling of wrongness did not leave my chest.

  Something was wrong.

  There was an emptiness in my heart that I could not quite define.

  This couldn’t be Lili. We were only a bit farther away now, weren’t we?

  I had always felt a strain on the link between us when we got too far from each other. But now there was no strain at all. Did that mean she was close, or… what? I had felt something during my mad dash, but only for a brief moment.

  So what?

  I closed my eyes and took another deep breath, but my usual trick to calm myself did not seem to work this time.

  Don’t panic, Lores, I told myself. Think this through rationally.

  What could even happen to her? Lili was a high-level magical being with strong aptitudes. She knew my spells, didn’t she? She was still me, wasn’t she?

  More than that, hadn’t she helped me design my new Veil of Inscrutability in the first place?

  So keep cool. I’d rather pity the idiot who tried to nerve her.

  That thought calmed me a little. I even grinned.

  I couldn’t see or feel what she was doing. It had to be the distance. Maybe the little pest was simply enjoying her “free” time.

  I huffed.

  That had to be it.

  I turned back toward the three humans.

  All right. I needed to solve this problem first. Then I would search for her.

  I tilted my head. Actually, I should be able to expel any poison from their bodies. My mana could easily penetrate living tissue and remove whatever I wanted gone—but… I didn’t have a sample of the poison.

  I snorted in dismay. If I hadn’t destroyed those ants…

  Oh well. I knew a place where there were plenty of them, and I could solve that problem and analyze their venom in minutes.

  I shadowmelded again, slipped back into the pipeline, and hurried toward the ants’ nest. A minute later I was back, knowing everything I needed to know about that damn venom.

  Ilse now had a hand on Annie’s shoulder and was looking around. The moment she saw me, she let out a yelp and covered her head again.

  I rolled my eyes, ignored her, and approached Luke. My mana was already working on him. In a couple of seconds, I could declare him clean.

  As if to confirm it, his breathing began to stabilize. Surprisingly fast.

  I huffed, satisfied.

  See? I can solve problems if I use my brain.

  I moved to Annie. When I was done with her, I turned toward Ilse.

  “I’m going to bring these two to a hospital,” I said. “Should I leave you here, or do you want to come with us?”

  She nodded.

  I raised a brow.

  “Does that mean you want to come?”

  Finally, she lifted her eyes to look at me, nodded again, and whispered a weak, “Yes.”

  I glanced once more toward the direction from which Lili should have come and shook my head.

  “Oh well, little rascal,” I muttered to no one in particular. “Out exploring the world, are you?”

  I planted my flag—Lores’ flag—and let the red banner with the black dragon unfurl in the wind. I grinned and let it stand there for a few seconds before camouflaging it. Like this, nobody would see it except Lili… or someone who accidentally stumbled into it.

  I added a repulsion spell to make that even less likely, then placed an encapsulated message at its base:

  I’ll be back. Let me know where to find you.

  Once I was done, I let out a sigh. All these preparations and justifications did nothing to ease the wrongness in my chest.

  It felt as if something was off with my heartbeat itself.

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  I turned back toward the humans. Ilse had covered her face again with her hands, but she was watching me through her fingers.

  I ignored her, transformed into a dragon, and almost instantly camouflaged myself. I picked them up in my claws and jumped into the air. Ilse let out a frightened yelp; Annie only pressed herself closer to Luke.

  Moving as a shadow in broad daylight would have been too slow, and I had no intention of exploring the pipeline any further.

  Holding the three humans in my claws—two in one, one in the other—I pushed hard with my hind legs, beat the air with my wings, and took off, kicking up a cloud of dust behind me.

  The gravitational bending rolled small pebbles and sand across the ground, but the spillover effect was far weaker than before. I was getting much better at controlling it.

  Soon I gained height and could survey the area around me. It seemed largely deserted.

  I glanced back, hoping to see Lili hurrying to join me—but there was no trace of her. I even made a small detour in that direction. As a dragon, my mana vision was excellent, and Lili should have been glowing like a beacon. Yet she was nowhere to be seen. Either she was already elsewhere… or she did not want me to see her.

  I squinted, pushing my vision deeper. The mana around me flared, becoming almost fluorescent, and yet, even at this heightened magnitude, I still could not see Lili.

  What I did see was something equally strange. The air itself contained mana. Not just my own, swirling around me, but mana in general, ambient, present. Until now, I had never seen this on Earth.

  Was it because of our proximity to the Zone? Or was my perception simply sharper now?

  Whatever the reason, the mana was there.

  As I flew farther east, the first signs of civilization slowly appeared: fresh tracks crossing the semi-desert, piles of trash, a couple of abandoned cars—then, suddenly, a sea of tents.

  All kinds of makeshift shelters and barracks, built from scraps. At their center stood an old mining town. On the northern edge of it was a military unit, separated from the rest by barbed wire.

  Adjacent to the military compound were more tents, aligned in rigid rows and enclosed by several layers of barbed wire, a heavily guarded area that looked like some kind of detention camp.

  At one corner of the camp stood an old building that had been refurbished as a hospital.

  I almost dropped them there, until I read the signs: quarantine area.

  Something about that place set off my instincts. Who were they keeping there? And why?

  I sighed inwardly. Did I really have a choice?

  Then I blinked.

  Oh. Wait a minute. I do have healing potions with me.

  True, they were very low-quality healing potions. I had bought them mostly to encourage Roberta’s work—my court’s alchemist had produced her first batches and had been immensely proud of them.

  Maybe they would work on these… zero level humans.

  I turned away from the refugee camp and, after a couple of kilometers, landed in the shallow valley of a dried creek. I carefully placed all three of them on the pebbles between thorny bushes.

  “Why did you bring us away from the camp?” Ilse asked, worry dripping from her voice.

  Annie stood near Luke, trying to shake him awake, but her weak hands barely managed to press into his ribs.

  I let out a sigh.

  “I didn’t like the look of that quarantine camp,” I said. “And I thought you might get into trouble if I landed with you straight in their hospital.”

  “But we can’t walk from here,” Ilse said, pointing at Luke. “They’ll die if no one comes this way to help us.”

  “If you want I can bring you there, but I think the alternative is better and faster. I do have some… low-quality—” I stopped myself. “I mean, some healing potions that might work.”

  I produced a small flask from my inventory.

  “I want to let them try this.”

  “Why don’t you… ahm… do the same as you did for me… ahm… heal them?” she mumbled.

  I shrugged.

  “The little rascal who healed you decided to take some free time,” I said, annoyed, pouting involuntarily—and immediately wondering why I even felt the need to explain myself. “But the healing potion should fix them,” I added anyway.

  It was a weak healing potion, but they were practically level zero. It should work wonders on them.

  “Why do you…” she hesitated. “I mean, I’m… I’m grateful, but why did you… why do you do this?”

  I raised a brow.

  “What do you want from us?” she asked, just as I was forcing Luke to swallow a few drops of the potion.

  I sighed, focusing on what I was doing, trying to think of an answer. Yeah. Really. Why am I doing this?

  Luke finally swallowed—and as I looked at him, I realized something.

  These people were different.

  There was something about them that shone brighter. I saw it only for a brief instant, but it was unmistakable.

  Had I just seen… their souls?

  Can I see souls?

  Had I chosen them because they had brighter, cleaner souls?

  I’m a demon. But I’m not chasing souls… am I?

  Luke opened his eyes. He coughed and shook violently, his hands rising to protect himself—then he looked around.

  “Annie?” he mumbled.

  “She’s safe,” I said, then turned toward her and handed her the potion, “Drink.”

  “No—what?” Luke asked.

  “It’s a healing potion,” I explained. “Look at your wounds. Can’t you see how they’re already starting to mend?”

  At that moment, something struck a bush behind me.

  It was… my tail.

  I knew it instantly—and yet I still froze, shocked to see it there. And suddenly I understood their expressions.

  I drew in a deep breath.

  Drats. This whole thing with Lili must have shaken me more than I’d realized. How had I not even noticed that I was standing on my digitigrade legs? I was in my demon form.

  At least I had camouflaged my horns and wings.

  But I’d forgotten about my tail.

  What’s done is done. I chuckled and lifted my shoulders in a shrug.

  “I’ve brought you close to a town,” I explained to Luke. “It’s only a couple of kilometers that way. Once you get out of this ravine, you’ll see it.”

  I took another healing potion from my inventory.

  “These are weak healing potions, so you’ll need to continue the treatment for several days,” I said. “Don’t drink too much at once. Just a couple of sips, then let the potion work. The magic is weak, and the tissue may decay again after a while, but repeated healing will fix that. Drink once or twice per day and continue until the wounds are properly healed. In about a week, you should be as good as new.”

  I turned toward Annie.

  “Do you feel better now?”

  She nodded, then hugged Luke—and I dissolved into shadows.

  People were waiting for me in the other world. But maybe I would come back later, just to see how they were doing.

  I knew I could find them if I chose to.

  I had marked them.