Melted edges of stone. Ash carpeting the ravine, all that remains of the towering lime-green grass and sprawling shrubs. A collapsed slope about ten meters ahead, as if something massive had turned around here. And a strange smell. Burnt iron mixed with something cloyingly sweet, tinged with the faint metallic tang of fresh blood.
“Demon,” Lenok declared with certainty. “Roughly second class, tied to the fire element. It left on its own. Couldn’t hold itself together. The water’s too close here, and just beyond that collapse, it even breaks to the surface. Plus, the red granite dampens access to power pretty well. It probably lost the trail.”
Arai nodded. He wasn’t well-versed in demons. Children of the white metal just weren’t built for it. Every stick has two ends. On one hand, those with dormant silver in their veins are immune to the forces of the lower boundaries; their mere presence can shield a crowd from a demon’s gaze. On the other hand, they can never sense a demon they can’t see.
“It left a while ago. No one stumbled across its tracks until now. There’s nothing for us to do here,” Lenok decided. “Grab your pup and let’s head home. You still owe me a bottle of red. We can celebrate not having to chase this lower-boundary creature all over the mountains this time.”
Arai nodded again. He wasn’t much for words. From the outside, the duo of Lenok and Arai must look quite the pair. The green commander, silent and imposing. The purple one, fidgety, chatty, and a touch hysterical. The influence of their elements, no doubt. White metal is a calm, unhurried force. Winter water, on the other hand, is mutable, bending to circumstances to a degree, yet ready to rebel at any moment. And then there’s the height issue. Arai towers at nearly two meters, while Lenok barely scrapes one-sixty. Conversing comfortably requires a bit of distance. What strange fate brought these two so close together?
Toshimine Aya was crawling over the rubble, engrossed in something unclear. He’d pause briefly, try to pry apart certain stones, peer intently at something, nearly shoving his nose into every crevice. The young man looked more like a hunting dog who’d lost the scent than ever before. Arai’s pup, no other way to put it. A dog utterly devoted to his master. If the boy had a tail, it’d wag furiously at the sight of his commander; as it was, he had to settle for an adoring gaze and readiness to follow any order. Yet somehow, he managed not to come off as foolish. And he wasn’t. Arai would never have made a fool his third assistant, no matter how loyal, even if they were the most devoted in all the boundaries.
Arai had found the pup in some scorched, power-ravaged village. Only two had survived there. A twelve-year-old boy, red-haired and tear-streaked, and a limping old man who’d spent the last of his life force saving himself and his great-grandson. The old man nearly gave out when Arai led them from the basement and showed them what remained of a town of twenty thousand souls. Nothing but mounds of ash and the skeletons of the sturdiest buildings. What had happened there remained a mystery; neither the old man nor the boy knew the answer. Arai brought the survivors back to the valley. Had the boy been older or the grandfather younger, he’d have taken them to the nearest settlement and forgotten their existence with a clear conscience. But this pair, he couldn’t abandon. Fortunately, both possessed the kind of power that allowed them to live in the Second Upper Boundary.
The old man didn’t last long, barely making it to his great-grandson’s thirteenth birthday, when he officially granted the boy the right to make his own decisions, declaring the thirteen-year-old an adult. Toshimine settled into the House of Wind Riders, was welcomed into the family, and stayed by Arai’s side. He turned out to be a demonically talented kid. So no one was surprised when, at seventeen, he earned the rank of seventh assistant to the commander of the Green Sector, and by twenty-two, he was third. The House of Wind Riders could take pride in their adopted son, and they did, occasionally showering the redhead—who stood out among the dark-haired Lones—with gifts. A small house of his own, somewhere to bring a girl. A sword, long kept idle in the family, because Toshimine, to everyone’s surprise, managed to awaken it. Even the right to speak on behalf of the House of Wind Riders, which was unheard of, since at the time, only Arai, the head of the House, and his two nieces—the valley’s best healers—held that privilege. Lenok was dying to know what deed Toshimine Aya had done to earn such a right, and why none of the noble Lones felt the urge to quietly do away with him. At this rate, the House of Wind Riders would soon be represented by two surnames—Lone and Aya. One dark-haired, the other red. A striking contrast.
To Toshimine’s credit, he never abused his privileges unnecessarily and maintained excellent relations with both the noble Houses and those from the Lower City. Some might scorn or hate him, but a true enemy? You’d be hard-pressed to find one. He was the kind of guy who stood his ground but was incapable of deceit, sometimes overly loud but able to be deadly serious when needed. Utterly loyal to Commander Arai Lone.
Arai waved a hand in the air.
Toshimine looked up, nodded, took one last sniff at something, and nimbly hopped over the fallen rocks, hurrying to answer his commander’s call. Lenok wouldn’t have risked it. He lacked the instinct that let Arai’s pup find a safe path anywhere. The kid could run across a swamp as if it were a paved road, never fearing he’d sink into the mire. A gift.
“Something wrong?” Arai asked, likely noticing something slightly off in his pup’s behavior.
“No,” Toshimine replied hesitantly, glancing back at the stones he’d been sniffing. “Just… there was no fire there. The slope wasn’t broken by a demon.”
“Backlash,” Lenok offered.
“Ahhh,” Toshimine drawled thoughtfully.
He seemed relieved by the simple explanation, as if Lenok had just spared him the need to concoct a believable lie. Odd.
Still, it didn’t matter. The pup would tell Arai everything he’d found anyway. He always did. No need to worry. Maybe the boy’s senses were just scrambled by the demon that had passed through. He wasn’t a Lone, after all; demonic magic affected him like it did anyone without dormant silver.
Lenok had a bottle of wine won in a bet waiting for him, along with a well-earned ten-day vacation he’d granted himself, during which he planned to escape his subordinates and forget they existed. He was in a great mood and had no desire to spoil it. Perhaps that’s why he overlooked several small details that could have made life easier for everyone down the line. Just the detached, otherworldly look in Arai’s pup’s eyes should have hinted at trouble brewing. That look on Toshimine Aya meant the boy had made a tough decision for himself and would now follow that path to the end. The worst part? He wasn’t in a hurry to share this decision with Arai. He just stayed silent. Staring inward at something, silent. Why Arai didn’t notice this was even more baffling. Or maybe he did but, for reasons known only to him, chose to give the boy complete freedom. A decision he’d later regret—or pretend to regret. Arai was Arai. Not even the creator of the boundaries could fathom all his thoughts.
***
Escaping his subordinates worked. Into a foreign boundary, no less. A place where he definitely wouldn’t run into one of his assistants, who’d look at their inebriated commander with expectation and hope. For some reason, these assistants were all convinced Lenok existed to approve their every action. Hints that he didn’t care, and that it was high time they learned to make decisions without bothering him over every little thing, were almost always ignored.
The week of vacation flew by quickly, unnoticed, and pleasantly. As far as Lenok could recall, they’d been celebrating something, but he’d be damned if he knew what. There didn’t seem to be a reason. There were, however, laughing women. The kindest bouncer, who twice helped Lenok climb the steep stairs to the second floor to his rented room. And some wandering cardsharp, whose face it was a pure pleasure to punch.
Then came a sweet girl—a courier from the City Council—and the fun had to end. Turns out, it wasn’t just clueless assistants who couldn’t manage without their wayward commanders. Apparently, even the wise elders might need them at any moment. While the internal affairs of sector warriors didn’t concern the Council, they had plenty of issues with treaties in foreign boundaries. That didn’t mean they’d sit idly by and watch chaos unfold in the City.
In short, they sent the girl with a demand to return and sort things out, without specifying what exactly, but insisting it was urgent.
And so, two not-quite-sober commanders returned to the valley, only to find it in an uproar. And who do you think was to blame for the mess? Exactly. The sole culprit behind it all was none other than Arai’s redheaded pup. Who had mysteriously vanished into thin air.