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I have to confess, in all honesty, that I was not exactly adverse to the idea, but I had to maintain my link with the [Sky Lotus]. I also needed to be aware of what was going on with Shindzha, to prevent any misunderstandings between her and the people going to meet her, before anything unfortunate occurred. In short, I was busy.
So, while a wriggling ball of sexual energy was pressing her body against mine, tickling me with her feline whiskers while literally purring in my ear and letting her hand roam, I must acknowledge I did nothing to discourage her.
I don’t know if I ever mentioned this before, but Ceria purrs under certain specific circumstances. For example, circumstances like this.
But, when the randy catgirl moved to lay claim to my mouth again, I dodged and complained, “You’re supposed to be too tired after I feed on you! How are you still active?”
Having failed her first attempt on my mouth, she diverted her forces to my bosom. Depending on the angle, her whiskers can tickle a bit there, as well. Especially when she latches on and they start brushing the tip on the other side.
It is fortunate indeed that her feline characteristics don’t extend to her tongue. Given her obsession with various tender spots of my body, that could have been bad indeed.
She didn’t answer my question. She just kept up what she was doing until I was half-way hypnotized.
That’s why I wasn’t able to dodge her hand when it found its goal.
But I did complain, “Ceria, you just fed me, less than an hour ago. You need to sleep.”
“Mmmm,” she responded, her human voice replacing the feline one. I guess purring and voice use the same equipment. She doesn’t seem to do both at the same time.
“Ceria…”
She finally let go with her mouth (but not her hand) and smiled up at me. “You need to sleep too, Lady.”
“Please, Ceria.”
“Mel and I both went to sleep, but we woke up when you went out to the balcony. She told me that if you weren’t gonna sleep, we would tire you out until you did. Said you probably only woke up ’cause of hunger, but you needed sleep just as bad. So now she’s gone, it’s down to me, right?”
I complained, “Does the power of horny overcome even the fatigue of feeding a vampire?”
She giggled. “I guess it does if you’re a cat. I’m gonna wear you out, Lady!”
With those words, she proceeded to do her best. Aunt Elianora’s advice that we should respect our Servants’ desires when possible was becoming highly problematic. I used to beg off using the excuse of preserving my virginity, but now I had nothing to fall back on. And… maybe I was a little lacking in motivation to find a new defense, because Ceria really knows what she’s doing.
But I needed to stay conscious of the [Sky Lotus] and Shindzha. I didn’t have [Vampire Sense] operating on her anymore, but I had a clear record in my head of her location. Or to be more accurate, her location with respect to my position, which I normally always have a sense of.
So, while mustering my thoughts to stay focused on what I was doing despite Ceria’s determined efforts to muddle them, I carefully cast [Vampire Sense] in Shindzha’s area again, so as not to alert her. It wasn’t strong enough to get the good-as-daylight image as before. It would just give me a sense of her presence and identity.
I didn’t find her.
Reaching down and grabbing a handful of red hair, I dragged Ceria’s head back up to bosom level.
“Content yourself with this for a while. I need to concentrate, and you’re making it too difficult.”
She pouted up at me. “Wady s’posed ta sweep.”
“Baby talk won’t change my mind.”
After sticking her tongue out at me, she began using it on the territory I had ceded her. Still troublesome, but a bit less so. At least it would work out until she once more remembered that she had fingers too. But I was worried for Shindzha, so I resolved to find her while my mind was clear.
I know it is weird to be concerned for the safety of this enemy creature, but hear me out.
The demons are one topic in which Huade absolutely does not follow the cliches of most fantasy manga, light novels or anime. Content creators in Japan like to use demons as metaphors for people of other ethnic groups. Manga demons are very often just people. Through no fault of their own, they are simply born that way. They even have families, loyalties, hopes and dreams.
Not on Huade. First, they don’t have families, because they aren’t born demons. Undead start as the souls of dead human beings who can’t reincarnate because their own corruption prevents them from passing into Samsara. If they aren’t purified in time, they will become demonized and turn into gidim.
They may pass into an unburied corpse and animate it, graduating from gidim to undead. They may reanimate their own corpse if they were corrupt enough at the moment of death to turn immediately into gidim, but usually they are animating a corpse belonging to someone who died more recently, because the gidim first spent a long time as a ghost before becoming a demon.
Before the rise of demons, this was as far as they would go, because they needed training to evolve from there, but had nobody to train them.
Then came the other form of demon, the one who starts as a human. The ones whose advent during the Elder Age eventually spelled the end of the Elders. The first were made by scientists who, studying naturally occurring undead in pursuit of immortality, learned how to make humans directly into demons. But instead of becoming undead, what they became instead were the first stage of living demons, ghouls.
These were seen by the humans of that day as a happy accident. They were better than being the living corpses they had been trying for. But while they were non-mortal like Elders, thereby being the liberation from mortality that they desired, they weren’t powerful like Elders, so the scientists wanted more.
They needed research material, and found a way to create undead directly from captured gidim, and necromancy was born.
They needed more gidim, and learned how to tempt corrupt, unreincarnated souls into demonizing themselves, and invented demonic induction.
Learning to make those undead more powerful, they created demonic evolution. Undead became skeletons, then larvae, then skeletal knights.
After turning themselves into ghouls, the demonic researchers used that evolution to climb the ladder, becoming wraiths or hags according to their gender, and from there became drudes, then imps, fiends, and so forth.
But the resulting higher level demons desired minions in the ranks below them, and they had discovered by this time that demons cannot reproduce themselves.
Demonic induction isn’t an involuntary process, fortunately. The human must cooperate. But demons are geniuses at applying temptation in order to corrupt the human into following them. So, using that talent, the first living demons began actively recruiting from outside their closed ranks, out of the general population, and the ranks of the lower demons swelled with those brought under their influence through their own greed.
In other words, all demons are former humans who chose the demonic path, one way or another. They can’t bear children of their own, so none are born that way.
But hellspawns like Shindzha never had a choice. I’ve said it before, but before becoming an enemy to us, she was a victim, and the daughter of a victim.
Concerned about her, I broadened the net and found her. She seemed to be up a tree.
I strengthened my sense so I could hear her and used my spiritual voice, so I was now able to see her clearly. She was crying again and she was, in fact, on a large limb, clinging to the trunk. I winced, because that bark couldn’t be comfortable against her bare skin.
[Shindzha, try not to move around.]
“There was a bear, Mistress,” she whimpered.
I was beginning to recognize that I had a genuinely traumatized woman on my hands.
Regular old mortal bears do exist on Huade, and also monstrous bears. I believe there are supposed to be demonic species as well, but they are supposed to be extinct on this side of the Dragonsbacks.
But a regular old mortal bear would be lethal to a woman who, without her magic, is no more a threat to it than a mortal woman could be. At least, to its immediate life. If that bear snacked on her and ate enough of her before her flesh made it sick, it could theoretically restart one of those extinct demonic species.
Fortunately, it must have been a brown bear. They’ll often give up on a prey that is up a tree, since climbing trees is difficult for them. The small black bear will scamper right up the trunk as nimble as a squirrel.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it will go away. Being a smart animal, it might just back off and pretend to lose interest until the prey foolishly comes back down. The deciding factor will be whether its hunger will drive it to look elsewhere before the fool comes down.
I cast my net wider, and found the bear, although it might already have been looking elsewhere. Or not actually hungry. But it wasn’t far enough away for my comfort or the hellspawn girl’s safety.
[Shindzha, do you know any elemental magic?] I asked. [Spells that do not depend upon demonic mana?]
“All my good attack spells are Demonic, Mistress,” she answered.
[Not any more,] I told her. [I believe that when you became my Servant, demonic mana became blocked for you. It may be possible for you in the future, but until we figure out how, you must restrict yourself to elemental magic.]
As bizarre as it seemed to me at first, I had already realized it would be better if she actually could use her demonic magic. She would be useless as a double agent otherwise, and once we had learned what we could from her, it was about the only useful role I could imagine for her.
“I only know first elemental magic, Mistress,” she whimpered.
[That will have to do. Your bear friend is not far away.]
She whimpered again, this time non-verbally.
Ceria cooed, “Laaady,” into my ear. I turned to kiss her, then told her, “A little longer.”
“Nuh-uh,” she answered. “Naaaaow.”
It sounded extremely catlike, the way she said it. And away she went, back down.
[Shindzha, an aircraft is coming to pick you up. They are my allies. They will be cautious with you, but I’ve asked them to bring you to my castle. You already promised me, but I will confirm with you again. I think it is best for both of us to be certain about this. Because you are my bloodkin now, I will protect you as long as you do not harm my allies and their kind. Do you understand?]
“Yes, Mistress,” she dutifully replied.
I strengthened my focus, to overcome Ceria’s renewed efforts, which were making me breathe a bit harder now. Hopefully it wasn’t transmitting somehow in my spiritual voice.
[For the peace of mind of the mortals, you will have to surrender your focuses and weapons and stay in a prison cell, until we sort out how we can have you live safely among us. If you object to this, then I will tell my allies to turn back, and you can continue doing your best to survive. I would suggest heading into the Oserian Highlands, to the northeast of here. The monsters are thick there, so you will be more likely to avoid mortal patrols. Of course, you will be at risk from the monsters, but you could survive with your magic.]
“Mistress…” she whimpered again.
[I’m sorry, but I honestly can’t think of any other options.]
“I promise, Mistress. I don’t want to live in the wild, and I want to serve you. I will obey your wishes, and I will not harm your people.”
I corrected her, [You will defend my people, Shindzha.]
Her face revealed clearly the fact that she hadn’t considered that idea yet.
Loyalty isn’t the same for demons, generally, but it might not be so for her. Unlike a true demon, who has no family ties or anything similar anchoring them to a wider sense of community, Shindzha has, at the minimum, a mother somewhere, assuming she was still alive. I wondered if it would change the dynamic for her. Or perhaps even the demon that sired her counted as some sort of tie.
But perhaps it was a weak tie. Once I gave her enough time for it to sink in she had truly switched sides, she nodded. Time would have to tell how sincere she was.
“It is my Mistress’s will, so I will defend your people,” she stated, firming up her resolve.
I sensed the launch rising from the courtyard. Pasrue had finished waking her crew and was now off on her mission. I focused on the [Sky Lotus] blossom in Diur’s hand.
[That’s quite enough,] Rhea declared sternly, inside my skull.
