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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/daecrist on 2026-02-20 02:39:32+00:00.
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Alistair
Alistair stared between the human and the demon with a growing sense of curiosity. Everything about this situation was odd and new to him. Even the idea of consciousness was odd and new to him.
He felt like he’d been like this for his entire life, but at the same time there was a part of him that felt like he’d been sleeping for far too long. Like there’d been long years where he wasn’t, and then he was. And he had the vague feeling he owed all of it to the human who’d just leapt up to taunt a group of scourgelings that were still shrieking and looking like they would enjoy nothing more than to kill him where he stood.
And yet.
Unlike most of the humans that he’d known, Liam simply stood there in defiance on the tower top, or what was left of the tower top after that failed spell, and let out a bellow that easily matched the scourgelings for energy. Even if it didn’t quite match them in intensity because there were so many of them and there was only the one of him.
Yet somehow that bellowing roar was enough to catch their attention. It was enough to get them to quiet down. At least the ones nearby. It was as though a wave of power shot out from him for a moment as he stood there with his black felblade out, ready to destroy.
Alistair’s notepad appeared next to him, puffing into existence with a thought. He turned to look at it for a moment and frowned. Many pages in his notebook had already been filled in, almost as though he’d used that notebook once upon a time. Maybe in the time before the world was blank and he didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. He would have to go through those pages at some point and try to figure out what was going on there.
But for the moment, he was more interested in watching the human and his interplay with the scourgelings.
Though even more interesting than that was the interplay between the human and the high princess. The scourgelings were simple rage. The fury of the infernal mana made manifest. The high princess who sat there on her knees staring up at the human was another matter entirely.
She stared up at him with her eyes wide. Her mouth hung open. She licked her lips as she stared at him.
Alistair wondered if she even realized what she was doing. He hadn’t known the high princess for very long, but he had dealings with the high nobility in the past. They typically didn’t like to show their emotion like that.
That had him frowning again. He’d had dealings with the high nobility in the past. He searched his mind, trying to find where those dealings had been. Trying to activate some memory or another, but there was nothing there. Only the vague sense that he’d had dealings with them in the past. That somehow this was right and correct that he should be here with a high princess now.
And this princess - Anatolia was her name, which wasn’t something that pinged any of the disorganized memories rattling around in his mind even though he felt like it should be - was staring up at the human. Then finally she looked over to him and realized he was looking at her. Which had her shaking her head. She turned back to the human and frowned.
“What in the hells are you doing, Liam? You’re going to get yourself killed.”
Liam turned and looked down at her. He brought the felblade up to his face, right along his nose and in between his eyes in a salute that Alistair recognized all too well. It was something the humans were fond of doing, though not quite the same as the salute from sword masters in demon lands. And then he leapt off the tower and into the scourgelings.
Alistair felt a sympathetic twitch in one of his claws as he turned to follow the human as he made his way through the ocean of scourgelings all around them. They were all on the cusp of their Opening Ascension, not the kind of thing that should be much of a worry at all for someone who was at their Third Ascension. Though he’d said something about being at his Second Ascension.
Perhaps he was at Second with arcane magic and his Third with the infernal mana? Alistair frowned at that. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he knew that was an impossibility.
He stared at Liam as he landed amongst the scourgelings and lashed out with his blade. It went this way and back, swirling all around him and killing the scourgelings wherever they moved towards him. It didn’t simply kill them by slicing them open and relieving them of their lifeblood either. No. He was moving his sword around and they simply vanished in a puff of infernal mana everywhere they made contact with his sword.
Alistair could only stare. Again, his second paw flexed this way and that in sympathetic concert with what Liam was doing out there. He realized he wished to be out there among the scourgelings as well. He wanted to rip and tear until it was done. There was a primal desire in him that wanted to run out there and destroy.
He shook his head and pushed down on that desire. His pen started to move along his notebook, jotting down his observations and his thoughts as he watched the human lay into the scourgelings all around him.
Liam moved in a circle and scourgelings died everywhere his blade moved.
“Fascinating,” Alistair said, staring at the death on display in front of him.
The infernal mana flowed into Liam rather quickly. It was almost like there was a river of the infernal mana that flowed into him. Again, his claws twitched.
He itched to have some of that mana himself. He was on the Second Ascension. Something he hadn’t thought of in years. Something he desperately wanted to change. He wanted to strive and be better. But he would settle for simply watching what was happening here, because he had the feeling something interesting was happening here. Something nobody had ever seen before, and he wanted to record it.
“What are you doing?” Ana asked.
He blinked and then turned to stare at her.
“What do you mean, what am I doing?” he asked.
He had a feeling it was a rhetorical question rather than a literal question. He was well aware he had a bad habit of answering rhetorical questions with a literal answer, and that it annoyed others when he did that sort of thing. At least he had a feeling that was the kind of thing he’d done once upon a time that annoyed others.
He couldn’t be sure where that notion came from, but it was there in the back of his head. Along with so many other things that felt like they were right there. Close enough to touch, but so far that he couldn’t see them.
“I’m watching what Liam is doing,” he finally said, deciding that a simple statement of fact was the best way to move forward.
“I see,” she said, frowning.
“Are you worried for him?”
“No,” she said, crossing her arms, though she seemed to say it a touch too quickly to his mind.
He stared at her for a moment, wondering if he should tell her that he didn’t believe her. In his experience, that was another thing people tended to dislike.
“You could always go out there and help him if you want,” he said.
“Against a scourgeling swarm like that?” she asked, looking out over the wall.
She peered out over the wall rather than jumping to the top and staring defiantly out like Liam had. He decided not to make a note of that either. She probably wouldn’t appreciate the comparison.
“He is quite good at fighting them, wouldn’t you say?” Alistair said.
He turned and watched. His paws flexed.
“He is a good fighter, I suppose,” she said. “If that’s the sort of thing you enjoy.”
“I thought it was the highest calling of everyone in the demon realms to test themselves against others and see if they were worthy.”
“Well, yes. Of course,” she said, turning to stare at him and blushing. “But he’s just a human, right?”
“Just a human,” Alistair said in a quiet voice.
If anything, her blush only deepened. He had the feeling he might’ve just called her out on something without realizing he was calling her out.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to return to my observations,” he said.
“Yes. Your observations,” she said.
A scourgeling leapt onto Liam and its claws raked down his back, eliciting a cry of distress from the demon high princess next to him. He turned to eye her again, and then he started taking notes on her reaction as well as on what Liam was doing.
Truth be told, after the initial moment where he waded into the middle of the scourgeling swarm and started swinging his sword as though they were no concern to him, and a scourgeling swarm was the sort of thing that was a concern to entire armies at times, he found himself more interested in the interaction between Ana and Liam rather than the interaction between Liam’s felblade and the demon scourgelings he was currently mowing down as though they were so much wheat and his sword was a scythe.
She was staring at him intently. Her eyes were wide. Her mouth had fallen open again. She was staring. In short, she was staring with entirely more interest than a demon princess, especially a high demon princess, should be giving to a simple human who seemed to be nothing more than a farmer with a blade.
Then again, the humans and the demons were so odd in how their differences and their similarities w...
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