Chapter 12: Chapter 12, in which I get attacked by a friend

I shook Paige awake at once then summoned my sword and ran after Brian and Asrin.

Asrin had flown high enough into the sky that Brian wasn’t interested in him anymore and he was running back to the tree.

The rabid Brain wasn’t him at all, claws like on the illusion demon were appearing where his hands were supposed to be. But he still wore Brian's face.

I was not prepared to fight something that looked human and be expected to kill it.

“It’s a shapeshifter,” Asrin’s piercing screech sounded as Brian didn’t charge at me, who was standing in his way, but sidestepped me and headed for Paige, who was just now getting off the ground.

“Paige!” I screamed while trying to tackle Brian down before he reached her.

I was unsuccessful in stopping him, but at least he couldn’t keep his balance and fell over and rolled on the grass. This didn’t slow him much - he got up in a matter of seconds, but it was enough for Paige to fully get up and move out of the way.

“Kids, this isn’t Brian, it is a shapeshifter,” Asrin repeated as he flew down at us.

The demon had stopped and was staring us down, its eyes were turning red, just like the one from earlier.

This didn’t last for long, because it turned around and made a run for it instead of charging at us.

“Shit-” Paige swore and ran after him. “We can’t let it come back with backup!”

At that, I sprinted as well and caught up to the shapeshifter before Paige could and tackled him to the ground. It slashed at me, but the armor I was still wearing stopped the worst of it, for a second I could feel the sting of its claws on my skin, but I refocused and used all of my strength to keep the demon from escaping.

Paige caught up to us and as I wrangled the shapeshifter down and pinned him to the ground, she cut off its head with one precise cut.

Thick black blood sprayed on my face, and as I got up my eyes stung from the evaporating flesh of the demon.

“Are you alright?” Paige said as she pulled me up from the ground. “Let me wipe that off you,” she continued and wiped the blood off my face with the back of her sleeve.

When I finally was able to open my eyes fully, I could see Paige’s eyes still bulging and about to pop out. “We nearly got ourselves killed…” she whispered.

“But we didn’t,” I affirmed. “And that should count for something. There’s no way we could have known, Paige.”

“We should have checked, we should have noticed,” Paige continued.

“You wanted to save him, kid, you wanted to do something good,” Asrin landed on Paige’s shoulder and talked to her softly.

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As we were about to go to sleep again, the adrenaline rushing through my body finally subsided and I remembered I was cut by the demon. Upon inspection, Paige concluded it was alright and she bandaged me up after disinfecting it with alcohol and putting some kind of salve on it. “If it isn’t fully healed in the morning, I’ll use some magic to speed it up,” she promised as we leaned on the tree once more and fell asleep.

Well, Paige fell asleep, but I couldn’t. Brian’s steaming bloody head rolling on the grass was playing on repeat every time I closed my eyes. At some point, the exhaustion had taken over and I had finally fallen asleep, plagued by the same image.

***

Asrin woke us up early in the morning, we had gotten around 6 hours of sleep, which was good, considering the events of last night.

Paige got out the food and we ate the now semi-stale bread with the dried boar meat.

When we were done, Asrin once again got into my backpack and we headed further away from the path to circumvent the Blood Summoner settlement.

We passed the patch of grey grass, where we had killed the shape-shifting demon, and my stomach churned at that.

“Do you think it killed Brian before it got to us?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s the only way it could have taken his form,” Paige answered. “These types of demons might not be super strong, but they are cunning, you saw how the illusion demons were able to separate and attack us, the shape-shifter thought it could fool us, too.”

I nodded, “So the illusion demons, what’s the difference between them and the shapeshifting one? They both were able to disguise themselves as humans.”

“The illusion ones, they just look like humans, if you had touched them at any point, they would have turned back into demons immediately, they can’t talk in any human language either,” she explained. “While the shape-shifting one can become a person, talk like a person, act like one too. You saw it, we both thought it was Brian down to the clothes he was wearing and stuff he was carrying.”

I nodded and tried to process this new information.

“The good news is,” Paige started up again. “That if we keep the same pace as yesterday, we can reach the Desert city late tonight, instead of sleeping outside another day and risking another demon attack. We’ve been moving faster than I initially thought.”

She unrolled the quest map that Asrin had given us and was tracing how far we had come already. I was happy to see we were already halfway through the detour around the Blood Summoner settlement. If we got this far yesterday, we could get to the Desert city for sure.

“That’s good news indeed, I hated sleeping outside like this,” I whined and purposefully cracked my neck. “I am not made for it.”

“I don’t think we’ll have the luxury to sleep in a bed a lot while on this quest, Vik,” Paige shook her head, a small smile creeping up on her face.

“Let me dream!”

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