Daedra walked slightly ahead of the prince, the two briefly taking a break from spiteful conversation and razor-edged insults, both it would appear, at last tiring of the seemingly incessant need to spew anger at one another. The walking was easy thankfully though, this earth here was good, and, despite it was not a place he particularly desired to be, he knew he had to admit his fate could have brought him to much worse lands.

Hefting the white-horned girl’s bag of traveling items on his back, the leather strap across his chest plate, just barely fitting around his armored torso, Eliphas took more of a look at this land the woman had brought him to. It was not unlike his home. The trees were healthy and though they weren’t extremely tall, they were dense and many-limbed. The air was warm, and he felt as though the current season was summer or something similar, light brown soil painted the forest floor as it did in the eastern portions of Emoria, likely land that was as well suited for cultivating crops as it was for producing lush, natural born trees.

Eliphas wasn’t enjoying himself, not by a long shot, but he wasn’t particularly finding the journey agonizing. He wasn’t tired, at least not by a huge measure; the two had only been walking for a few hours since they broke camp. By comparison though, Daedra seemed to maintain the same uniform speed without the slightest divergence. She was a curious creature, her various unnatural abilities, as well as her appearance, pulled at the intellectual part of his mind. Eliphas had seen much of the rest of the world, or so he had thought anyway, and though it was dark, cruel, and harsh, he was at least curious about the many things he could learn from it.

Daedra, was at present, completely unique. He had never met anyone like her, though he could liken her stubborn, heedless attitude to some exotic beasts of burden. Her species specifically was something he was surprised he’d never heard of or seen something like, and as he trudged on in silence, the prince caught himself looking at her horns, curved up and behind her back-length hair that draped slightly too each side of her shoulders.

His interest in answers compelled him to speak after the relative quiet had gone for so long, unbroken,

“Hey she-devil, are there many more of your kind?”

Daedra didn’t slow her walk, though she flicked her head briefly towards where the question had come from, continuing to keep her eyes ahead forward as she replied, not hiding her contempt. She sighed inwardly, her inner conversations with herself, rustled.

“What?”

“Are there more of you, your people I mean? Is this realm populated by more beings such as yourself?”

The girl chuckled, scoffing with a smile at the thought of the prince’s small world being turned upside down and his attempts to still try and come to terms with it.

“Yes, there are more. Though there’s not nearly as many left as there used to be.” She said with cold dismissal, as if entirely uncaring, “most humans will encounter one of us in their lifetime, though very few with actual regularity. We tend not to hang around anywhere long.”

“You’re nomads then?” Eliphas deduced aloud, thinking himself on the right path.

Daedra did glance over her shoulder completely this time, for the moment seeing in Eliphas genuine curiosity, and not specifically an attempt to nag at her. This, for some reason, felt more injuring than insults or harrying.

“Not exactly,” she muttered after a pause. A few seconds passed in quiet, reserved silence, both parties letting the words of the woman’s last sentence sink in, albeit for vastly different reasons. Her mood had changed instantly at the memories of what exactly was being referenced, and she sought to distance herself from it as soon as possible.

“Now shut up, I’m trying to forget you’re here.”

Eliphas did as was commanded, though not because he was commanded, simply due to the fact his questions had been answered and he felt no reason to press the issue further. An interesting prospect, he reflected, he wondered if all her fellows were as gifted in the art of combat as she was and if they could worryingly change their physical forms just as drastically. That, coupled with Daedra’s resistance to harm, sent a shiver down the Emorian’s spine as he considered there were others like her.

Many creatures of the mortal realm were vicious and merciless, but none of them seemed to take as much pleasure or enjoyment in being so as Daedra had previously.

As the black knight marched, he glanced up from his thoughts, sending them away, and began to pull at the strap of the bag containing things for the journey, inside of which was the pair of bladders the two had separately been drinking water from, among other things like food for the journey.

“Are we near to water by any chance, or should I ration our supply?” He said without thinking, finding himself a little too comfortable with his captor.

Daedra tilted her head back in frustration and rolled her glowing yellow eyes, sagging her arms down, and slowing her pace gradually to a halt as she spoke, teeth grinding together,

“I said stop talking, could you just shut up for on-“

Just then, a thump came from the nearby trees, a whistling shriek accompanying the sudden noise taking both of the pair by surprise. A whizzing black dart flew through the warm, dead air, a dark slender shape smacked into Daedra’s back with a fleck of blood as it impacted with a wet smack. Eliphas recognized the whistling sound at once and as he got a clear look at the projectile now partially embedded in her back, he was already certain it was the sound of a crossbow. The girl tumbled forwards and into the prince’s chest plate, and he instinctively caught her as she cried out in pain, as if he meant to aid her. Just over her shoulder, however, Eliphas saw the source of the shot, as well as the two other men who came rushing at them from the woods, shouting and brandishing weapons as they sprinted out towards them.

The lord of Emoria coldly shoved the horned woman aside and to the ground, remembering again who he had suddenly felt concern for, now, completely uncaring of her injury or her safety and only concerned with meeting this new threat and putting his recent, boiling hate to good use.

She tumbled to the ground as the prince bounded forward, his armor plates echoing his movements and coming to life with clunks and heavy clangs of thick steel.

All three attackers were dressed in a variety of leathers, pelts, and sparse bits of light, flexible animal skin for protection, but as far as Eliphas could see, they held no uniformed appearance.

Bandits or highwaymen, he concluded, nothing of serious note.

The first man to reach the prince was a large, smelly warrior with a long beard, wielding a pair of relatively matched war axes. He swung one at his throat, not displaying a complete lack of finesse, but also not skillfully enough that his intended target could not duck and pull away in time to dodge the opening strike. In response, Eliphas thrust a fist upwards in the gap of his assault, his armored knuckles smashing into his lower jaw with a force that sent several teeth, along with a spray of blood, spewing upwards and away from his ruined mouth. A crunch of splintered bone, as well as a shout of hot agony, joined together with it as he fell back and to the dirt with a crash in an instant, clutching his ruined face.

The second man was at his side quickly enough though in turn, in his hands were a dagger and a shortly curved, iron sword, and even though he was sure this man was just as unskilled as the first, the Emorian hurriedly raised his fists up to prepare to block his face and neck. The man howled a fierce cry of battle-rush, swinging downwards with his short sword and then coming forward to stab with his dagger. Eliphas had fought untrained ranks of soldiery such as this before, and the clear sign of an overconfident opponent was always one who bore two weapons, most of the time it was a fighting style whose weakness was not worth more than it’s strength, and as result, it showed.

The strike sliced down and into his gauntlet’s thick armor, sparks and a shriek of metal pinging out, but Eliphas' wrist remaining unharmed save for the sudden, prickly numbness along his hand as a result of the blow. The dagger thrust did not go overlooked though; the stab had been in reality a good attempt.
But not good enough.

 The prince caught his foe’s wrist in his grasp and contorted it so that its weapon clanked to the ground, its fingers forced open with the disarming technique applying pressure to his nerves with a painful pinch, in precisely the right places. The unarmed combat instructors of Helmont had taught him well, and Eliphas felt even they would have cracked a smile at his perfect execution of the technique just then.

A distance away, Eliphas briefly caught sight of the crossbowman finishing his reload, and as the fiend raised his fresh weapon to fire, the Emorian pulled his current assailant’s body in front of him, using the unfortunate soul as an improvised shield. The prince ducked slightly behind the bandit’s back as the thumping shot of the mechanical bow clunked again, firing a second deadly dart into the air. The sharpened tip of the crossbowman’s shot smacked with a wet crack into his fellow’s chest, burying itself into his heart with a squishing mist of red. The short sword clattered to the ground just before the fool died without a word, a wheezing noise coming from the gaping tear in his ribcage gushing blood as Eliphas quickly discard his borrowed, living cover, his anger focusing his quick reaction and pushing him to act next.

The black armored began to sprint forward with a loud bellowing reply of his own, his heavy plate having no great effect on his overall swiftness, being worn for so many years of his life, hoping at the same time to close the distance quickly enough to kill his final opponent. If the robber reloaded again, there was a decent chance the shot would find purchase at this range, and as such, Eliphas had to be as fast and as violent as he could manage if he hoped to survive this encounter.

Before he’d managed to reach halfway, however, the man cried out in abject horror as the black warrior felt first a crash, then a second, great tremor of the ground as a pair of trees were smashed down or thrashed aside with it. The force of the concussive impact sent the prince tumbling over backwards, trees shaking and earth splitting where the man with the crossbow had once been, now replaced by the foot of the monstrous creature he was traveling with, the soles and toes of which were exposed, but everything above the ankle to the lower knee garbed in its typical dark, leather-like coverings.

Blood and dirt blasted out as the man was crushed quicker than thought, his short scream silenced immediately as Daedra’s foot pulverized his existence. Eliphas rolled over as debris and dust cascaded around him, managing to look up and, finding her eyes glaring down at the mess beneath her, red liquid running between her bottom digits and coating her skin, a feral snarl of beast-like teeth and heavy breaths accompanying her sudden anger.

Without warning, the girl raised her foot and stamped it down over and over again for a few moments, shouting as she did so, emphasizing each strike with a word, and sending rocks and gravel rebounding off her small captive’s armor as he shielded his face from her wrath.

“Stupid! Little! Asshole!” She growled out with hate fueled by new pain in her back, towering now well over seventy feet into the air. Eliphas shuddered far below, wide-eyed and heart racing, a trickle of blood running down his face from the man who’s jaw and face he’d destroyed.

The last stomp brought with it a strange and sudden silence, leaving her deep, throaty inhalations the only sounds in the area being made, leaves and dust falling to the ground together all around as the earthquakes ceased.

Eliphas gulped as his eyes held her apprehensively in view, surprise and fear rising up from his guts. He had one hand up, partially covering his head from the rain of rocks that had battered the road. He pushed himself up slowly with his other hand getting to a crouch and then rising to stand hesitantly, starting to carefully rise to his feet. He didn’t want to test or provoke the horned woman, even when she wasn’t as angry, but he knew right now if he did, he would also suffer her impulsive fury.

She breathed deeply high above, as if suddenly exhausted, and as she shut her eyes and balled her fists, she opened them a moment later and glance down to where Eliphas was now standing, canine teeth bared like the fangs of a tiger.

As her eyes flared deeply and locked onto him, he forced himself to hold his ground. Eliphas held up his open hands slowly, head nodding with a shrug a mild smile that colored him impressed, immediately displaying he had no intention of commenting on Daedra’s swift ability to end life. He was not about to open his mouth and incur the horror of what he just witnessed upon himself, of course. 

Daedra growled and closed her eyes again, looking away and shrinking in an instant, back to her, “normal,” height and a small distance away. As she stood silenced, Eliphas glanced cautiously to his side and walked to the downed, bearded man, gathering up both his discarded axes an examining them momentarily as their owner moaned, half-unconscious. They were crude by design, and the handles were of slightly unequal length, but they were sharp and fairly well balanced, so he took them both for himself as his new armament.

The man with the ruined face murmured slightly, writhing weakly in pain as Eliphas neared him and saw his ravaged jaw and cheeks, weapon in hand and intent in his eyes. Without pause or regard for his slurred, pain-induced stupor, he raised the blade in his right hand and as the bandit’s eyes widened, understanding what was about to happen. Eliphas then stroked down without hesitation onto the ambusher's neck, cutting deeply enough with a spurt of rich crimson the first time and ending his pained struggles, finding no reason to keep him alive, blood splashing his lower armor plate.

Jerking the axe handle back up and free with a squelch, the black armored man rose and took a deep breath, closing his eyes and tilting his head back, calming his adrenaline and bringing himself back down from the rush of sudden combat. His head fell back down after a few moments of quiet reverence, and when his eyes came open, he cast his glance over to Daedra, who now reached around her back with futility, groping for and failing to pull out, the embedded bolt that struck her from the crossbow.

Eliphas glanced to the man he’d just killed, looking about him for anything else that might be useful, but only half putting his gaze to the task, he was still mostly allowing his attention to keep to the inhuman girl, trying hopelessly to get the shot out of her body.

“Do you require assistance?” He said without looking up, smiling widely and trying not to sound mocking.

“Piss off,” she fired back with frustration as she continued, without any improvement, to pull the annoyance free. She groaned and gasped in pain and futility each time she reached around, growing more and more tense as each attempt brought the pain up again sharply.

Eliphas turned and began to walk over to her, sighing as he did so and shaking his head back and forth, coming to stand a few feet away from Daedra as she swore and grumbled with an accompanying stab of stinging irritation. He was quiet and crossed his arms as he watched her, waiting for her to inevitably admit defeat.

She was facing away from him, but she heard him approach, ceasing her efforts as he neared and speaking out to him, clearly angry.

“Ugh…Look…Just….” Daedra began, obviously distracted by her injury, gesturing with her hands aimlessly. She next swung her body away and began to walk awkwardly towards the nearest tree, and Eliphas followed her, understanding the reason for doing so.

The two made it to the bark of the standing wood, and the girl lowered her head and placed her hands on the tree, bracing herself against its sturdy form. She arched her back and gestured reluctantly with a nod for the prince to get on with it, gripping her skin of the plant with her fingers. The girl’s firm musculature was stretched and taut with her bowed posture, her lower back solid, but not oversized, as well as her rounded posterior, mostly concealed in that strange, black leather. Eliphas couldn’t help himself steal a glance at her form. It was pleasant, though at once he shoved his creeping thoughts away and focused on his task at hand, not wanting to insult the woman, nor wanting himself become distracted at all.

“Go on then.” She said plainly, facing the tree and shutting her eyes for the imminent discomfort to come.

Eliphas slid both axes into metal rings on either side of his armored skirt, the rings purposely made to hold weapons in the event a scabbard was lost, or like now when scavenged pieces came without one. It was only just now that the prince noticed there was very little actual blood coming from the tear in her flesh, though he reminded himself this probably wasn’t anything to be surprised by. The wound was also oddly shallow, the dart itself only perhaps the span of his index finger deep into her meat, as if the skin retained that unnatural ability to resist harm. He placed his left palm flat against Daedra’s back and for the first time felt how strangely warm she was, positioning the protruding bolt shaft in between his thumb and index finger. With calm focus, he carefully wrapped his opposite hand’s fingers around the base of the shaft and then, gripped it firmly.

A moment or two passed as he waited, Daedra taking a deep breath. As she completed doing so, Eliphas jerked his arm violently and the bolt came free on the first tug, her blood spattering outwards onto his chest as the wet flesh released the sharp projectile with a squelch. 

The woman roared with pain and bared her teeth as she swung out without warning in anger, her clenched fist catching Eliphas off guard and backhanding into his cuirass with a loud, heavy thud that echoed not unlike a struck bell. The air was crushed out of his lungs as he was sent soaring and tumbling away, hitting the ground and scraping along the dirt for a couple of meters, a trail of soil and dust following after him as he landed with a crash.

His toss coming to a halt, he found himself on his back, mouth open and gasping, complete shock and pain written in his gaze as his eyes forced shut and his arm came to his cuirass.

The prince swore loudly and gripped his chest, coughing and groaning as he rolled over on the ground, pain filling his body as he struggled to rise to his knees.

Daedra arched her back and sighed with relief, smiling with her eyes closed, the red cut where the dart had entered already a fraction smaller than a moment before.

“Ahh, that’s better.”

Eliphas shouted angrily from a ways away, red in the face and eyes wide, rising to one foot, and then standing unsteadily.

“You practically shattered my ribcage, you big idiot! The hell’s wrong with you!?” Eliphas shouted, taking steps to rejoin her.

“Oh shut up, you’re fine. Besides, you should have gotten out of the way, tin-man.”

The prince made it near to Daedra, wincing as his armor settled on his now bruised torso. He stomped over to the girl and pointed a finger directly at her as he arrived.

“I swear you’re the fucking worst!” He shouted, his anger rising with a dangerous disregard for whom he was speaking, “You kidnap me, slaughter my men, force me to do ridiculous things for your personal hygiene, and constantly berate me for no reason!” The girl stood quietly with a smirk of teeth on her face, uncaring it would seem for the man’s latest burst of intolerance.

“Then, when I try and help you, even just a tiny bit, you practically punch a hole in my sternum!”

Daedra was enjoying herself immensely, for the first time since she could remember, she was actually entertained by something that she wasn’t about to kill.

“Yeah, I kidnapped you, to sell you. Remember?” She said shrugging and closing her eyes, hands coming up with the pose, “you expect me to be sweet and kind to you? Have you ever been ransomed before? That’s not exactly how it goes.”

Eliphas’ temper flared again, and shaped his hands into upturned claws, frustrated at the obvious point she was missing.

“No, you freak! I expect to live long enough to be ransomed back and return home! Isn’t that the point?! If you kill me, or shatter my damn spine, you won’t get anything for all this nonsense!”

The girl made an exaggerated display of thinking, leaning on one leg, her toned lower body pulling tight musculature as she tapped a finger on her chin, looking to the sky.

“Hmmm,” she began with a sarcastic tone, “maybe I don’t intend to get paid, maybe I just enjoy torturing you?” She replied, muttering the last sentence and looking back to him, staring sharply into his eyes and grinning savagely.

“I doubt that very much, if that were true we wouldn’t be traveling away from your home. Do you think me a fool?”

“Yes.” She came back at once, not erasing her smile, rubbing dirt in his proverbial wound, obviously taunting him and hoping to insight further reactions.

“You’re insane,” Eliphas said with finality, shouldering his bulk passed Daedra as she turned and laughed after him, heading over to the large indention in the ground that was the girl’s new footprint.

“Yeah? Well, you’re ugly! No wonder you became a soldier!”

Eliphas ignored her and trudged on, he was quite done with his outburst, and fought now to stifle its aftereffects. He wanted to check the other bodies and their contents, if people were going to attack them on the road, he wanted to scavenge anything that might prove useful later.

Heading over to where a tree or two had been flattened by Daedra’s foot, the black prince glanced around half-cautiously and then stood at the ground’s slight edge, where the enormous footprint she’d produced a bit ago began. He swallowed as his eyes scanned back and forth, the mess of red and pink slop at its center the apparent focus of his interest.

The girl made her way to his side and nodded with a smile, admiring her handiwork, or perhaps footwork, being the correct description of the scene.

“I have to admit, it felt good to kill something. I haven’t squished someone in almost two whole days!”

Eliphas glanced over to Daedra as she joked with what felt like gleeful honesty, his eyes clearly judgmental.

“What?” She said next, shrugging and surprised at his serious demeanor, “you’re going to try and tell me you didn’t enjoy yourself just now?”

The man rolled his eyes and sighed refusing to answer that suggestion, looking forwards and dropping down into the footprint with a clunk of his armored bulk, sliding up one of his newly acquired axes and coming to a kneel next to the former man’s remains.

“What are you doing?” she called down as she narrowed her eyes.

“Just looking. Give me a moment.”

Daedra scoffed and chuckled, crossing her arms and then playing with one of her index finger’s nails.

“I think his wounds are beyond your care human.”

Eliphas ignored her once more, taking the blade of his axe and prodding around for what he could discern may be the man’s trousers. There was something about what the woman had said last night, that this part of the woodlands was relatively safe, and how confident she seemed to be in that determination. He thought to himself, correctly he found, that something wasn’t quite right.

A flap on the “body’s,” midriff came open with a sticky flop, the material that resembled vaguely leather, gross and wet with some manner of gore. Eliphas stuck his hand into the leather hole and shuffled his armored fingers around, extracting something like crushed animal teeth and bone in his palm as he brought it all out into the light.

Daedra cast her gaze around as if to search for threats amongst the trees as she stood at the lip of the print, all the while impatiently waiting for her taken prize to complete his strange search of the pile of mushed remains.

Tossing the bones away, finding nothing of value, Eliphas went to the same spot of the opposite side and with his bloodied gauntlet, flipped that pocket open and searched it as well.

His brow furrowed and he plucked his fingers onto what felt like parchment.

When his hand came out, he found he did indeed hold a folded bit of paper, red runnels of liquid staining one corner of its shape.

Eliphas rose to his feet and slid his axe back into the ring on his hip, carefully opening the discovery that was about the size of a large, adult man’s thumb.

“Hey ugly,” Daedra called from behind, her notice of something possibly valuable in his grasp that had taken his interest, “what did you find?”

Eliphas read the contents of the short message to himself, as it was in a language he could understand he was surprised to find. His eyes came up as Daedra called out to him from behind, but he remained silent as the note’s meaning sunk into his mind. Eliphas raised his head slowly and looked about the trees with sudden suspicion, feeling almost at once as if he were being watched.

The man turned at last and began to take steps towards the waiting woman. He offered the piece of unfolded paper in between his index and middle finger for the horned girl to take, and as she did so, he spoke, in a very serious tone as his eyes kept searching around anxiously.

“Is this road called Multa?”

Daedra looked down at the paper as she read the two words written in black ink, scratched into the surface it seemed like in a hurry, by an unskilled hand.

She frowned slightly at his insight proving correct, crumbling the small note in her hand and discarding it before making eye contact with Eliphas as they both stared in mutual silence. The pair understood now that the small ambush was not a random bout of highway robbery, it was instead the grossly underprepared site for a murder, one that, unfortunately for them, did not go as planned.

“We need to go,” Eliphas said as if it were a command, his voice stern and sounding used to giving orders that were never to be questioned.

This discarded, crumpled piece of paper the pair had read reading, as it sat in the dirt, "By Multa."