Chapter 296: Demon
The moment Maggie carried Nightingale into the fight, everything shifted.
The Devil abandoned its pursuit of Lightning. It wheeled, dove, and threw itself at the oncoming shape—a great wrenching pivot, its half-restored arm already raising another spear. The arm swelled. Skin split along the forearm in a wet seam, and a fine crimson mist hung in its wake as it released.
The spear came slower this time. Slower enough.
“Maggie!” Nightingale slapped the creature’s flank, released the fog, and stepped through it.
“Ahool—goo!” Maggie’s body shrank in an instant, pigeon-small, and the spear tore through the space where they had been a heartbeat before—a thin whistle and then nothing, swallowed by the sea below.
Nightingale stepped back into the world on the Devil’s blind side. Maggie surged back to full size beneath her.
The Devil’s arm hung limp. It had spent everything on that throw, and the bone had given: snapped at the elbow like an overstressed branch, the shredded skin already tightening as the limb collapsed inward to an inch of thickness. Its left hand still gripped the reins. The flying mount banked hard toward them—no retreat in its posture, no calculation. Only impact.
Maggie dropped at the last moment, let the Devil pass above, then climbed again.
By then Nightingale was no longer on her back.
She came through the fog behind the Devil as it fought to release the rope and turn. She pulled the trigger without ceremony. The shots came in a continuous burst—not rage, exactly, though it felt like something that had been waiting a long time to be released. The carapace across its back cracked and splintered. The rounds drove through. The Devil issued a series of hoarse, wet sounds, and then it was gone, unraveling into the blood-red mist that its kind left behind.
The flying mount, masterless now, tumbled under Lightning’s next pass and struck the water. The sea closed over it.
The cloud gazer settled onto the shore.
“What do we do now?” Nightingale asked, her eyes on Anna. Of all of them, Anna alone seemed to have kept something intact through the fight—not calm exactly, but a particular quality of attention that hadn’t fractured.
“At this distance, even if we fly through the night, the balloon won’t reach Border Town before midnight,” Anna said. She spoke without looking up from the chart. “Lightning and Maggie carry His Highness ahead. Leave now.”
“Ahool! No problem!” The great creature lifted its head from where it lay beside them.
Lightning hesitated. “We’ll deliver him.” Her voice was flat—the flatness of someone pressing something down. Probably thinking of the basket, and what she hadn’t done when the spear came.
Nightingale touched her head once. Said nothing.
They lashed Roland to Maggie’s back with care, checking each knot twice. Lightning took her position beside him, and then they were aloft, tracing the Redwater River westward toward Border Town.
Wendy watched them go. “And us?”
“We keep moving,” Anna said. “They may send a second group. This shoreline is still too close to the mountain.” She looked at the remaining witches—Soraya, Sylvie, Wendy herself. “Find a safety zone. Then we make camp.”
No one argued.
When the cloud gazer rose again, the basket held five.
“How did they find us?” Soraya asked, once the mountain had receded to a line behind them. “The balloon is painted. We were two thousand meters up. Even a good observation mirror wouldn’t—”
“There was a large one,” Sylvie said. She had her arms folded, staring at nothing in particular. “Crouching on one of the black spires. Head larger than its body. Covered with eyes—hundreds of them, in every direction.” A pause. “The moment I looked at it directly, every eye turned toward me. Within seconds, Devils were pouring up from the ground.”
Soraya said nothing for a moment. “There’s actually something like that.”
“And the mounts were strange,” Anna said. “After the bullets hit them, the blood wasn’t black. It was deep blue. Nothing like the creatures during the Months of Demons.”
“The first Devil Nightingale shot had blue blood too,” Soraya said quietly. “I saw the wounds.”
Sylvie turned. “So they’re not demonic beasts?”
“I don’t know,” Wendy said. “But it’s fortunate that Maggie can take their form.” She let the thought settle. “If she hadn’t saved Nightingale when she did, I don’t know how we get out of that.”
Nightingale had been silent through all of it. Now she said: “Her ability has changed. The magic core inside her body—it’s no longer a spinning cyclone. It’s a fixed shape. A pair of white wings, spread wide.”
Lightning held Roland’s arm and tried to count the distance remaining.
She had plenty of time to think on Maggie’s back, the wind too loud for conversation. She had thought through every moment of it twice already—the spear arcing toward the basket, her own body locked in place, the choice she hadn’t made. The Devil had a large body and moved poorly at speed. Anyone could see that. If she had broken from the basket at the start, put herself between it and the enemy—
To step forward when danger came was what an explorer did. Her father had never hesitated. Pirates, seamonsters, the grinding dark of the Fjords in winter—Thunder always moved toward the threat, because that was what you did when the people beside you needed you to.
For the first time she understood, fully and without consolation, how far she still had to go.
But he had also said: fear is learned past by becoming familiar with it. And skill comes from practice, not from talent.
She would wait until Roland had recovered. She would ask him for a pistol designed for her hands, and she would ask Nightingale to teach her to shoot properly, to move properly, to stop freezing when the moment arrived. And she would not stop until she didn’t freeze anymore.
“How is he?” Maggie’s voice was rough now in this form, like wind moving through hollow stone. “He feels cold, ahool.”
Lightning turned. Roland’s eyes were closed. His lips had gone pale, and the burn across his side had turned dark and ragged—a wound that looked like it had been done with something other than fire. The blood on his clothes had dried hard. She pressed two fingers to his neck and found a pulse, faint and slow, but there.
The skin under her fingertips was ice.
“How much magic do you have left?” She looked ahead at the Redwater, its dark thread pulling toward the west. “We go at full speed.”
“Ahool!”
By the time Border Town appeared below them, her vision had begun to swim at the edges. Speed at this distance spent magic like water through sand, and her body had nothing left to draw on. She gritted her teeth and aimed for the castle courtyard—came down rough, too fast, caught herself—and shouted at the guards running toward the noise before the words were fully formed: “Get Nana Pine. Now. The Prince has been wounded.”
Chapter 296 Demon
The situation reversed the instant after Maggie, carrying Nightingale on her back, joined the battle.
Being forced to give up the pursuit of the nimble Lightning, the Devil released an angry howl, rolled around and dived down, throwing itself against the fast-incoming Maggie. The arm, which hadn’t been fully restored yet, raised another spear, then expanded so quickly that the skin began to crack and a bloody mist began spraying out.
Even though it spent all of its power, the thrown spear which was thrown this time, no longer had its original might. At least now, Nightingale was able to see the trajectory of the spear.
“Maggie!” She patted the back of the giant creature beneath her, then released her fog and stepped into it.
“Ahool – Goo!” At the same time, Maggie’s body began to sharply reduce in size, once again turning into a pigeon.
As the huge target suddenly disappeared, the spear sped past the two with a whistling sound before falling into the sea.
At the next moment, Nightingale reappeared from the fog, and Maggie returned to her demonic beast form. The whole process of dodging had been as natural as the moving clouds and the flowing water.
The devil let out a painful anguished wailing, its arm began to shrink, until it was only an inch thick then broke, just like an overstrained branch. But its left hand was still firmly gripping the reins, moving the beast to confront them. Looking at its posture, it seemed as if it wanted to crash into the two of them, as if it had given up all thoughts of ever returning.
However, Maggie obviously never intended to fulfill its wish, moments before the collision, she suddenly let her body dropped, letting the enemy pass by instead. When she regained her balance once more, Nightingale had already disappeared from her back.
The latter was just like a ghost as she appeared behind the Devil.
The enemy hurriedly tried to untie the rope it was holding, however, Nightingale would obviously never give it the chance to do so.
It was as if she was releasing all of her pent-up anger as she pulled the trigger and the gunfire sounded out continuously.
This round of shooting not only broke the carapace at the back of the Devil but also ran through its chest. The enemy issued a series of hoarse sounds,gasping for air and quickly collapsed into the everporating bloody mist.
And lastly, the now masterless demonic beast also died under Lightning’s attack and fell into the sea, disappearing soon after.
The cloud gazer slowly landed on the shore.
“What should we do next?” Nightingale asked anxiously as she looked at Anna, it seemed that only she’d only been able to stay cool-headed during the battle.
“We’re so far away that even if we flew through the whole night, the hot air balloon will still take until midnight before it can reach Border Town,” Anna stated their situation, “Therefore, Lightning and Maggie have to carry His Highness on her back, and set off in advance.
“No problem ahool!” The giant beast, lying with its head at their side, opened its mouth and spoke.
“I… also have no problem with it, we will deliver him.” The little girl’s expression seemed somewhat gloomy, probably thinking about her capability
as an explorer. The fact that she’d been too afraid to fight the enemy, had caused everyone to fall into so much difficulty.
Nightingale touched her head, “No one has ever been good at it from the beginning, this isn’t your fault.”
Together, the witches tied the still unconsciously Prince onto Maggie’s back, after they finished, Lightning took her place beside him. They then soared into the sky, flying all the way along the Redwater River while heading towards Border Town.
“And we?” Wendy asked, “My magic will soon run out.”
“Continue to fly, as far as possible. Perhaps the enemy will dispatch a second troop to look for us. This place is still too close to the snow-capped mountain; we have to leave it behind as far as possible.” Anna said, “Wait until we reach a safety zone, we will then look for a place to hide and make camp.”
Her decision was unanimously endorsed by the remaining witches.
When cloud gazer rose again, there were only five people left in the basket this time.
“In the end, how have the Devils been able to discover us?” Soraya asked, feeling puzzled. “Both the hot air balloon and the basket are painted with sky camouflage. Furthermore, at the height of two thousand meters, it is hard to identify us even by using an observation mirror.”
“There was a colossal Devil,” Sylvie said while knitting her brows. “It crouched on the top of one of those black spires, it had a head that was larger than its body. Its head was covered with countless eyes. Even though I merely gazed at it… it immediately turned all of its eyes towards me. And hundreds of Devils came rushing forth from within the ground, it was as if the whole area had started boiling.
“There really exist such a monster?” Soraya gasped in shock.
“There is still more, those two flying mounts were also very strange,” Anna voiced her thoughts, “After getting hit by the bullets, the blood flowing out of them wasn’t black as you would expect, but rather a deep blue – this is entirely different compared to the mixed species we’d encountered during the Months of Demons.”
“But on the contrary, it is similar to the Devils,” Soraya replied, “I saw that the first Devil Nightingale shot, also had blue blood coming out of its wounds.”
“In the end, aren’t they demonic beasts?” Sylvie asked.
“That I do not know… but it is great that Maggie can change her appearance into theirs,” Wendy exclaimed. “If it hadn’t been for her saving Nightingale, we would all have been in danger.”
“Her ability has evolved,” Nightingale, having stayed silent until now, suddenly opened her mouth. “I saw that the magic source inside her body no longer had the form of turning cyclone, it has turned into a fixed shape instead – a pair of outstretched white wings.”
While holding His Highness’ arm, Lightning’s heart was filled with endless guilt.
The Devil merely has a malevolent appearance, when in the sky, with its large body, it wasn’t able to respond quickly. If I’d just left the basket to block the enemy at the beginning, His Royal Highness wouldn’t have been so seriously injured.
To bravely step forward and protect one’s companion is the unshirkable responsibility of an explorer. Whenever Thunder went on an exploration in the Fjords, he would always take the lead whenever they encountered any danger. Taking everyone along so as to break through all incoming crises, whether it be against pirates or a monster from the deep sea, he never took a step back.
For the first time, Lighting realized that she had still a huge distance to go before she could call herself a great explorer.
But her father had also mentioned that while fear can be fought off by acknowledging and becoming familiar with it, skills could be mastered through repeated training.
She made a firm resolution that she would wait until His Highness’ injury was fully healed. And would then beg him to give her a specialized pistol and request older sister Nightingale to teach her how to shoot and fight.
“How is His Highness, ahool?” Maggie muttered. Compared with the pigeon’s voice, her voice was now rough and muddy, like the wind blowing out of a stone cave. “I felt that his body has become colder, ahool.”
The little girl clenched her fists and turned around to fly back to Maggie.
Only to see that Roland had closed his eyes, his lips were pale, and together with his messy gray hair, he even seemed to be somewhat lifeless. The blood on his clothes had already solidified, while the black burn wound looked like a spectacle which was too horrible to endure. She gently placed her hand on his neck, feeling for a weak beat to prove that His Highness was still alive; only to feel the skin under her fingertips was frightening ice-cold.
“How much magic do you have left?” Lightning estimated the rest of their journey, “We will have to go at full speed.”
“Ahool!”
When the two witches arrived at Border Town, the little girl’s vision already became faint and blurred. Flying at high speed not only quickly deplete her magic, but it also put a great burden on her body. She gritted her teeth, using the last bit of her strength to directly fly into the castle front courtyard, while shouting to the guards, who had come over to investigate the noise, “Quickly call Miss Nana, the Prince has been wounded!”