Chapter 10: Chapter Ten

Sadrahan did return. With one young demon on his back, and two small ones under each arm. Liln and Sarthas watched him seem to grow in their eyes as he strode within the cave, limp, frail bodies dangling off of him, the weak rested on his shoulders and clutched in his grip, and the two smaller ones who were not yet even adolescents, barely clinging to life, held fast under his muscled forearms that, when curled to keep them secure, made his already powerful biceps appear that much stronger.

“Liln,” he said as he stretched the trio out between herself and Sarthas, “if I give you some meat, water, and goat’s blood, can you give it to them?”

“You- You feed them too? Do you know them?” She asked, blinking her eyes and darting her gaze from the unconscious trio to himself.

He cocked his head at her, “What? No. But I went and brought them here, why bother doing that if I’m just going to let them die? They could die back there,” he jerked his thumb toward the exit, “just as easily as here. Can you help them or not? I'm going to check on my daughter, and then I’m going out again.”

“Why… why are you doing this?” Liln asked, “We’re not from your village, we don’t even know you.”

Sadrahan cracked the knuckles of his good hand and in silence went to go and retrieve his daughter from the stone bassinet he’d shaped for her with his own claws. He scooped her up easily in one hand, along with a hanging skin of goats blood diluted with water. He tilted it toward her lips and she drank greedily, he touched the little ruby necklace and watched it sway back and forth within the ribcage it dangled from.

“Why?” Liln asked from where she sat, unsatisfied by his silence, she leaned forward as if to push her words to his ears a little bit sooner.

“If you have to ask my reasons,” Sadrahan said, his words barely carrying to her ears, “they wouldn’t make sense to you anyway. Now will you do what I’ve asked, or not?”

He set his daughter down again, and Liln bowed her head. “Yes. Yes I will.”

“Good.” Sadrahan said, and after giving her what she needed, he left without another word.

The trio woke up when he’d been gone an hour or more at least, and they at least had the strength to move, shooting up and shouting with alarm at the changed conditions. “Where are we?!” They cried out, then shut their mouths when the mountain walls shouted their question back at them. Their breath quickened, and Liln was quick to get their attention.

“Relax! You’re in Sadrahan’s mountain!” Liln exclaimed and held out her hands, offering out bones thick with dried meat on them.

“Sadrahan?” The eldest of the trio asked, his arms thin and his body covered in marks, his features compared to the younger two suggested a relationship of some sort.

‘Elder brother, perhaps? Uncle, maybe?’ Liln contemplated, and the two immediately clung to their elder counterpart. But she chose to answer, rather than question them. “Sadrahan is the mighty demon who rescued you, he took your bodies from where he found you, and carried you here to his home. The meat,” she said as the two younger demons accepted the bones with twitching, eager hands, “is his.” She held out the skin of goat blood to the elder of the trio, “the blood is his. Everything here is his.”

The elder gulped down the goat’s blood while the younger tore with ravenous ripping noises at the meat dried on the bone, weeping tears of blood with absolute joy on their faces.

“I don’t know a Sadrahan…” The elder said, “There was no one by that name in our village. Why would he do this.”

Sarthas interjected, “He says that his thoughts are beyond us, and maybe they are. He was wise enough to claim the mountain, and strong enough to fight off the humans alone.”

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“He what?!” The trio shouted, and the walls shouted back at them.

“He fought the humans by himself, he’s a giant, a towering figure of a demon who cut his way free of their attack on his village and saved his daughter’s life. A whole horde of them attacked his village, and he was the only one wise enough to build a wall. From there he fought his way free of them all, and carried his baby to this place and made it his stronghold… we are here by his grace and strength alone.” Sarthas forced himself up to a seated position, groaning against his wounds, “A mighty hero of our people… wise beyond our reason, strong beyond our strength.”

“Baby?” The elder asked, and Sarthas pointed to the stone covered by a goat’s fur.

“No way…” The elder rose to shaky feet, and strengthened by his disbelief, he walked along the lakeshore beneath the green sky of moss and drew the fur slightly back. “There’s… there’s a baby here?!” He shouted across the distance, looking at the gouged out rock, and looked closer. ‘By the strength of this very mountain…’ He thought as his fingers traced over the strone, there were claw marks, many of them. “He carved this out himself?!”

“He what?!” Sarthas and Liln shouted together.

“He carved the stone down deep enough with his bare hands to make a bassinet for his child?!” The newcomer cried, and in his mind, the faceless rescuer loomed like a dragon to a newt in his mind.

“More or less.” Sadrahan said, bearing two listless but conscious demons beneath his arms. “Help me with these, retrieve food for them, and when everybody is fed, I have questions.”

“Questions?” What kind of questions?” Liln asked as he approached and laid the two out on the stone beside Sarthas.

“Where the humans are. How our kind are kept. Things like that.” Sadrahan said and put his hands on his hips, “I need to know everything I can.”

“What, why?” One of the younger pair inquired, his innocent eyes blinking with curiosity blooming within.

“That should be obvious. How else am I going to break anyone out?” Sadrahan asked as if he was speaking of the planting season coming on fast.

When they stared blankly up at him he asked instead, “What, did I say something strange?” He scratched his left horn and waited for an answer that was not forthcoming. ‘How else can I keep my daughter safe if we’re all alone?’ The clear answer to the rhetorical question was, ‘You don’t’ and their dismay therefore seemed all the more absurd.

 

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