Chapter 14 Trains and Company Part 3

This time both me and the dwarf looked at her.

“You…eat cave-rats?” I inquired.

“Of course! But not the wild ones. They’re too gamey. We farm our cave-rats nice and right.”

“Farmed cave-rats!” The dwarf chuckled. “Do you plant weeds and harvest dung too?”

I thought the critter-kin might get offended by those words, but instead, the little mouse girl just smiled.

“We got some dark weed down here, but dungs only for fertilizer!”

“Darkweed?!?” The dwarf asked. “Now who in the hell would eat darkweed?”

“It’s probably biomanced to taste better and be more nutritious, same with cave-rats. Right, Niff?”

Niff nodded with pride.

“We got some really powerful biomancer to make us a breedable line of cave-rats and darkweed a few hundred years ago and we’ve never needed to rely on the city utilities since! We’re fully independent,” she chirped.

Then the little mouse-kin dug into her pack and pulled out two small pieces of jerky.

“Here, try some!” She quiped holding one piece out to the dwarf and the other piece out to me.

I took it and put it in my mouth, slowly chewing on the dried bit of meat.

“Beefy,” the dwarf spoke. “Tastes a bit like venison too.”

I nodded while chewing on the meat.

It occurred to me that I’d had three people be nice to me over the span of a week. That was rare in my experience. People either hated me or tolerated me. At best I’d get cautious acceptance. But these two and elf back at city hall had treated me like a person.

This city was full of accepting people. I wonder if it was the culture or the experience of existing around so many different species all the time. Every species had its stereotypes, maybe when you were forced to live around them so much it made that much more accepting.

Even for us half-demons.

That was bad. I was a decent person, at least that’s what I’d like to think. But half-demons were evil. As displeasing as I had found the accusations to be, I worked around them, not against them. I proved myself by my actions and not by my words.

I appreciated the kindness, I did. But it was wrong. I was wrong.

Was I manipulating them? Was I acting normal to get them to lower their guard around me? Even if my intentions are just adventure and hunt out there, was it wrong of me to act so casual?

Should I even be allowed to make friends?

“Hey!” A voice chirped through my thoughts.

I looked down and saw Niff holding out a bit of a plant.

“It’s darkweed! Wanna try it?” She asked me.

I took the fruit from her hand and looked at it. It didn’t look like darkweed, and it didn’t feel like darkweed either. Darkweed was leafy and thin, but this was a thick bit of plant fiber.

I saw the dwarf already chewing on his side of the table.

“It’s juicy!” The dwarf spoke. “Like a fruit!”

He seemed to be eating it raw, peel and all. I shrugged and did the same.

Immediately the taste of the peel soured my mouth before the fruity flesh inside sweetened it. I chewed on the candy-like substance.

“This is good,” I commented. “Good.”

Darvind nodded in agreement.

“You could sell this right proper. Charge a hefty price for it too!”

“We do sell it!” Niff yipped proudly.

“Where at? I’ve never seen the stuff in shops,” Darvind commented.

“It’s a luxury product, sold to the High Families exclusively and it’s in quite high demand,” the dryad answered.

All three of us turned to her.

“I’ve had it before,” she replied.

“Ah, so you’re pompous and a noble?” Darvind said to her. “What a class act.”

The dryad squinted her eyes at him.

“Don’t act like you’re any different Hymth. That’s a powerful noble name itself,” she replied.

“Not for me.” He replied with a light shake of his head. “We kept the name but we’re about as removed from the original family as could be. My great-grandfather is the official last noble, but everyone after is a peasant. I grew up working.”

The dryad snorted and turned back to her posse.

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“What a right green apple that one is, eh?” Darvind said with a hushed voice looking in my direction.

I shrugged.

“She’s so haughty!” Niff chirped.

Again I shrugged.

Darvind gave me an inquisitive look.

“You too afraid to speak about a noble or does her face make up for her insults?” He quipped at me.

“I don’t have much to say,” I replied.

“What? She insulted you! She called you evil without even knowing your name!” Niff harrumphed.

“It happens,” I answered. “And besides, it’s not like she’s in the wrong. Half-demons are dangerous.”

“Come now, lad. Just because you’re half-demon doesn’t mean you’re evil. I met several demon-kin myself and they weren’t evil. Well, not most of them.”

“It’s not about me. It’s about my species,” I replied. “I can keep myself together, but I’m an outlier.”

“But you’re not a bad guy, right?” Niff replied.

I smiled and looked towards the small critter-kin.

“No offense Niff, but you haven’t even known me for twenty minutes. I could be the Dark Lord’s champion and you’d never even know it.”

“No way!” Niff replied, shaking her head with certainty. “I’da known if you were evil. I’da smelt it!”

The dwarf let out a laugh at the mouse’s absurd proclamation and I smiled a little wider.

“Smell evil? Never heard of that one now!” He boomed.

“It’s true! All of us rodent-folk can don it! Predator sense, we’ve all got it!”

The dwarf laughed again but I just looked at Niff inquisitively. I didn’t think she was lying. Race-based abilities weren’t strange. Dwarves were almost entirely immune to poison, elves were better at magic, and vampires could transform into bats. A small rodent-like population of beast-kin having a sort of predator awareness was quite possible.

“It’s not that simple Niff. Demon-kin are different from half-demons. Demon-kin have physical demon traits and flesh, but not the demonic instinct.”

“Demon instinct?” Niff asked.

I nodded. I could see that she didn’t get it. A part of me didn’t want to explain it to her. A part of me wanted to keep this small friendly person in my presence for as long as I could, but that would be unfair. That would be wrong.

“It’s… it’s like being hungry or sleepy, a natural draw to a certain behavior. Except instead of sleeping or eating, you’re thinking about killing, cutting, and torturing. All the time, every time.”

Both of my new or now maybe former- acquaintances looked at me in shock.

“Even now?” Niff asked me.

I nodded.

“Always. I can dull it. Turn it into something like background noise to the point where I barely notice it, but the voice is almost impossible to silence.”

The mouse and dwarf looked at me again, both analyzing me.

“But you seem so… normal,” Niff replied defiantly.

“I’m not.”

The small mouse-kin looked at me, this time with more judgment in her eyes. She was searching me, thinking back on our interactions and trying to figure out what had happened. For some reason, that made me feel better.

“Eh,” Darvind said with a shrug. “You’re alright lad. I’ve met worse. Besides, it’s not like I’ll be in any danger. I’m silver rank. I think I’d take you right down on a one-on-one.”

“Wait? Are you saying you’ll team up with us to explore the dungeon?” Niff asked.

“Unless ya don’t want me?”

“No!” Niff shouted. “I’d be honored to be joined by a veteran adventurer on my first dungeon crawl!”

The mouse-kin sprung and saluted her arms with a reverent look on her face.

“I’m not exactly a veteran. I served as a church guardsman for a couple of decades and my previous combat was cataloged and taken into consideration when deciding my adventuring rank is all.”

Huh. That was interesting. Combat experience mattered for adventuring, true, but it was one of many things they tested for. You also needed intelligence and a wide array of knowledge on monsters and dungeons. Some dungeons even refused you entry unless you took a quiz on their specific brand of monsters. To rise to silver rank through sheer combat experience, well, that meant you were strong, either high silver or low gold level of strength.

“What about you then?” The dwarf asked me.

“The more the merrier,” I answered.

“I can’t believe this!” A voice spoke out. “You’re joining him too? Do you not know what he is? Did he not tell you himself?”

The dryad stood this time. Her seat was several rows ahead and right next to the aisle. She got up, turned around, and marched towards me with a fury.

I readied myself.

“Watch it,” Darvind warned.

“I can understand the girl, but you? A paladin? You should know better!” She shouted.

I could see her clothing now. She must have been wearing an enchanted cloak when she got on the train because I definitely would have noticed this absurdly enchanted clothing when she walked in. She was loaded. She had one magical ring shining with a red ruby burn, and her clothing shimmered with defense wards. Her green skin was clear and clean and the clothing hung snug against it in an almost prearranged fashion.

Glamour? Yes, faint but present. Her smell, her hair, her clothes, and her eyes, all of it were arranged by magic to accent her beauty.

It was a wonder I disliked her as much as I did.

“I’ll make my choices lass. My life’s got nothin to do with yours,” Darvind spoke with a firm hand on his axe.

“Now I know you’re a noble, and a right rich one too from the looks of ya, but ya should watch yerself lass.”

“I’m not being spoiled! I’m pointing out the mistake that could get you all killed! Didn’t they teach you anything about demons at your church or are you just that stupid to have forgotten it all?”

“Shit insult,” Darvind replied. “And I know what he is lass, the man spelled it out for us.”

“And?”

“And we’ve made our choices. No need to explain them to you now.”

“But-”

“But,” Darvind said stepping forward to the woman. “Nothing lass. Tis none of your concern.”

I could sense the air shift and felt magic prepping itself further up on the train where her group was. The rest of the dryads were stronger than her, escorts of some sort. And so could Darvind, clearly. But he held still.

“The Adventurer’s Guild is above the high families,” I called out.

“Seriously, if you attack me over this, the guild will dig its heel in. They might even employ a rule of no escorts for the High Families or prevent them from joining altogether.”

“What?” The dryad said, suddenly snapping her head to me.

“I know you want to kill me, but if you do, you’re family will have a lot more on their hands than just a murder charge. I’m a legal citizen, not a monster. You’d serve at least seven centuries for something like this and you’d be strung up as an example by the mayor.”

Her face paled at the last word. The High Families were the old rulers of Asrin City. They used to own the land and make the laws, but that had been taken from them after the Dark Lord was defeated. Now they just had excessive amounts of wealth and power, but were, technically, not above the law.

“How could you possibly know that-”

“I don’t. I’m guessing. But at the very least your parents will be pissed, and this will be a political scandal for your family’s enemies to use. But that’s the best-case scenario.”

She looked at me, squinted, and frowned before shuffling off to her seat.

“What a pile of poisoned wood she is,” Darvind muttered.

I shrugged again.

“She wasn’t going to attack,” I mumbled.

“How do you know?” He asked me.

“He’s right. She wasn’t planning to attack us. Her friends were though,” Niff answered with her nose up in the air.

“She was trying to bait me. I’ve seen it before. The angel would have attacked me but she was trying to get one of us to strike her first, so she could justify her retaliation.”

“Huh,” Darvind replied.

“Was that the truth then!” He yelled to the dryad. “Just trying to bait us so you can cut us up!”

The dryad didn’t respond.

“Oh now she shuts up,” he grumbled, taking his seat across the aisle from us. “Worth the price though.”

I saw the dryad's green head twitch in the distance. I smiled.

“Damn right.”