Once Sincir awakens, he realizes he’s no longer lying face down against Ena’s p, and that she’s looking at him… Which has so their gazes meet as soon as he opens his eyes.

  Ena blushes slightly, but doesn’t avert her gaze.

  “H-hi,” she says.

  “…Morning?” Varzath replies, slightly groggily, “Or whatever time… How long did I sleep for?”

  “I don’t know,” Ena confesses, “But the noise outside quieted down a while ago, so I think it’s nighttime.”

  He smiles at her. “Were you watching me?”

  “Sorry. I was looking for… Something inhuman.”

  Sincir blinks, then raises an eyebrow. “…Excuse me?”

  Ena grimaces. “Eleanor says you’re not human. And that you’re not eight, either.”

  “It baffles me to think you’ve believed otherwise for even a second,” a cold voice interjects, attracting Sincir’s gaze to Eleanor, now sitting as far away from them as the small space of their surroundings allows.

  Unlike Ena, she doesn’t meet his gaze.

  “Sincir… Are you really not human?” Ena asks, her tone indicating what she really means is ‘Did you lie to me?’.

  Sincir considers what to say. If he wishes them to help him from now on, he’ll have to tell them at least a part of the truth eventually… And besides, after how much they’ve been through together, he doesn’t really want to lie to them.

  “…Sorry, Ena.”

  Ena bites her loweer lip, averting her gaze. “…How much of what you told me was the truth?”

  “I was as truthful as I could, considering our circumstances. Had I told you the truth, you’d have run away, and we’d have never become friends.”

  “Bullshit,” Eleanor interjects again, “You were worried she’d tell on you, and then would’ve had to leave, or kill us to keep your secret from spreading.”

  Sincir grimaces. “Wanna go at it, bitch? As we all know, I’m not above beating up an orphan… And besides, they can both be true. Yes, I was working hard to keep my real identity a secret, and yes, I’d have killed to do so, if necessary, but I’m not the monster you’re making me out to be.”

  Ena chuckles, then snivels while wiping silent tears Sincir didn’t realize she was shedding. “What happened to being nice to her?”

  Sincir rolls his eyes. “Considering what I said I’d do to her if she revealed my secret - which she did - I am being.”

  Looking at Eleanor again, Sincir realizes she’s staring at him now, blue eyes gleaming coldly in the dimly lit, small space between them.

  “…Well, I’m willing to tell you the truth if you two promise me you won’t spread it.”

  “…And what if we do?” Eleanor asks.

  “Just ignore her. She has been looking for a fight since having woken up. Nothing I say gets through her… Not that that’s much different from usual,” Ena says, shaking her head while sighing, “Listen, it’s okay if you’re not ready to tell yet, Sincir. You’ve saved me from drowning… I trust you. I own you more than my life.”

  Ena smiles at him, leaf-green eyes still gleaming slightly in virtue of her tears, and Sincir finds himself averting his gaze guiltily from hers.

  It is a wonder the world had not broken her yet, when she’s this nice… At the very least, he should make sure he is not the one to do it.

  “…I’ll do nothing, Eleanor. The truth is, I was bluffing. I’d not hesitate to kill an enemy, but I’m not prepared to kill children, not unless I really have no other choice. If, after hearing what I have to tell you, you decide you want to leave, I won’t stop you… Though, I hope you at least understand that people will die if I have to fight to defend myself. You can’t bme me for this much, right?”

  Meeting Eleanor’s gaze, Sincir smiles at her; As expected, she doesn’t smile back, though she doesn’t avert her gaze either, which he takes as a sign to keep going.

  He sighs. “We’re to start…? Well, my life story is quite long, so let’s skip a bit and-”

  “Wait,” Ena interrupts, “First, I know you’re comfortable and all, but my legs are killing me; And second, how old, exactly, are we talking about here?”

  Blushing slightly, Sincir clears his throat as he rises to a sitting position.

  “Sorry, Ena. Eleanor, would you please grab me something from the backpack? I’m starving… And I don’t suppose you know any water spells, do you? Here, you two must be thirsty.”

  Waving his hand, Sincir gathers a ball of water in front of each of them.

  “Don’t be shy, go ahead.”

  Ena stares at her ball in bewilderment, then pokes a finger in it, before pulling away her hand as she looks at him. “It doesn’t even move… How many characters did you have to use for something like this, Sincir?” she murmurs.

  Sincir hums thoughtfully, and it doesn’t escape his attention Eleanor is also watching attentively as she waits for his answer.

  “How many…? It’s a bit more complicated than that, you know? Suffice it to say, a bit of Spatial Magic is the key to making them float in pce like this, and the rest comes from a repurposed cleaning spell… More or less. As for being able to create two at the same time, that comes from practice. Many spells are recastable, meaning a mage is able to create more than one copy during the casting process if they’re proficient enough.”

  “Don’t let him fool you,” Eleanor says, “What he just did was nothing sort of monstrous. I’ve never seen anyone capable of magic like this, and he makes it look easy.”

  Sincir chuckles. “I was not trying to fool anybody, Eleanor… But you’re not exactly wrong. I assume you’d be hard-pressed to find a mage of my caliber in human nds… Now drink, please. It isn’t mana-free to keep them floating in front of your faces.”

  It also isn’t as easy as he’s making it out to be, as she said, but Sincir knows when to keep his mouth shut.

  Mercifully, the girls do drink, even Eleanor, which means she must’ve been really thirsty. Once they’re done, Sincir also gathers some water for himself, while Eleanor distributes a bit of food around, for the three of them.

  “…Hey, it’s our first picnic together,” Sincir comments while seeing the two of them digging at their food like starving wolves.

  Ena smiles at him, but Eleanor looks less than amused.

  “You were about to tell us your story,” she reminds him, drily.

  “And your age!” Ena adds. Strangely enough, she seems excited.

  Sincir sighs. He guesses it was too much to hope the magic show and the food would make them forget about the whole thing, huh?

  “Fine. Well, care to take a guess, Ena, since you’re so curious?”

  Having been about to bite into the hard piece of bread stolen from the orphanage’s kitchen, Ena pauses, mouth still half-open, then smiles. “Two hundred!” she says.

  Sincir coughs, nearly choking over his own food.

  This girl… She could’ve hesitated a little. He doesn’t sound that old, right?

  “…A thousand,” Eleanor guesses quietly, blue eyes following his movements carefully even as she brings another piece of bread to her mouth.

  “Eh? There’s no way he’s-”

  “I’m about a couple of centuries past two thousand,” he cuts them off, “Though I couldn’t tell you the exact age, since we don’t count our birthdays,the way humans do. You have good instincts, Eleanor.”

  Silence. Ena’s eyes are wide, her hand having stopped again halfway toward her mouth.

  Eleanor seems to have expected something simir, however. “We…?” she asks.

  Sincir sighs. It’d be easy to pretend he’s some sort of lost fey from Elysium for now, but once he begins to bring people over from Hell, his identity will become obvious enough.

  If he wishes to retain their trust, it is best to be upfront about this.

  “Yes, we, demons,” Sincir says, smirking as he takes another bite of his bread and meets Eleanor’s gaze directly.

  She freezes.

  “…I know what you’re thinking, but don’t. Use your brain, Eleanor. Think about everything you’ve heard and seen so far,” Sincir tells her, almost pleadingly.

  Eleanor takes a slow, deep breath. Her fists clench, then unclench. He can tell what’s going through her mind; He could have killed her or left her to die, but he didn’t. He was living among humans for many years, but other than a couple of scuffles, none of them were ever hurt.

  More importantly, she has no hope to best him in a fight right now.

  “…You’re lying,” she says in the end, seeming to force the words out, “I’d have felt it. I can… I can always feel when they’re nearby.”

  Well, that expins why she was at the ceiling that night, and how she ended up at the church when even he was able to notice something was wrong.

  As a matter of fact, he knew some nephilim can sense demons, but it had slipped his mind until now.

  “Sorry, Eleanor, but I’m not lying. This body might be human… But my Soul is not. I was born in Hell, and there I lived, until eight years ago.”

  From his perspective, anyway.

  “A demon… Like the thing at the church?” Ena murmurs.

  Sincir grimaces. Being compared to such trash wounds his pride terribly, but he should be thankful she doesn’t seem as horrified as Eleanor, at least.

  “Yes,” he says, “You could say we’re technically the same, in the way that a bear is the same as a tiger, from the perspective of a human… Which is to say, we’re both demons, but from different species.”

  “When you mentioned a war,” Eleanor interjects, “You meant the war between Heaven and Hell.”

  Sincir rolls his eyes. “The eternally boring war between Heaven and Hell, yes. Which, I might add, started long before I was born.”

  Eleanor grimaces. “And when you said I reminded you from home…”

  “I meant Hell, yes. You’d be surprised how many angels you see around those parts, can’t throw a stone without hitting one of them.”

  Of course, Sincir doesn’t mention the fact that she reminds him of a nephilim in specific, Sunnazoth’s sve and secret lover, Ketol… Or that, in fact, any of the nephilim and angels he might have come across in his kingdom would’ve been imprisoned or ensved, usually for sexual purposes.

  …Huh? Could it be that Varzath was one of the bad guys, after all…? Naw, there was a good reason for all of those things. He did the best he could, all things considered.

  “Go on, get it out of your chests,” Sincir prompts the girls as he realizes they’re just staring at him in disbelief now, saying nothing. “I’m sure you must have some questions.”

  Ena is the first to react. “You mentioned species. Which one is yours?” she asks.

  Eleanor clenches her teeth. “Stopping acting like this is some sort of picnic!” she suddenly screams, “Demons are evil! Their very existence is-”

  Ena rolls her eyes. “Eleanor, according to your precious Holy Book, so am I… As you’ve made sure to remind me countless times before. And besides, I’ve never seen Sincir doing anything evil… Unlike you.”

  Sincir chuckles. “Hey, she said it, not me.”

  “I… That was…”

  Flustered looking, Eleanor averts her gaze from the both of them. Breathing heavily, she seems like she might be about to throw up soon.

  “Eleanor,” Sincir calls gently. Then again, once she doesn’t immediately respond, “Eleanor, I’m not the same as the demon who killed your family, or the demon who killed Father Anders. I’m not your enemy… And neither is Ena.”

  “Father… Father Anders is dead?” Ena murmurs, “But I thought…”

  Sincir shakes his head. “We were too te. He was already dead when we arrived.”

  Eleanor sobs, her shoulders now visibly shaking.

  Shit. He supposes this was too much, even for someone as strong-willed as her…

  Noticing Ena staring at him in panic, Sincir clears his throat.

  “Look, you can hate me if it makes it easy for you, but I still intend to keep my promise to you, as long as you keep your part of it. We don’t need to be friends in order to work together, right? Think of it as a professional-”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Eleanor cuts him off, voice shaky and pleading, “Just shut the fuck up for a minute…!”

  Sincir closes his mouth. Seeing no other choice, he watches her in silence until she’s able to pull herself together again, though for her credit, no more than a moment passes until she sniffs, loudly, wipes her face, and turns in his direction again, eyes red but determined.

  “When Vozradith was summoned, they sacrificed my town to do it. Every st person, except for me… I was to be a personal offer, made to the demon directly, once it had crossed… To be kept as a pet, o-or eaten. I watched them die, watched their profane magical circle being bathed in my mother’s blood, watched the creature appearing from a fend in space… And then, it ughed. Not malicious… At the time, I didn’t understand a thing, but looking back on it, I see it. It thought it was funny for a bunch of mortals to go through so much trouble to summon it. It looked at the dozens of bodies before it and ughed as if was the funniest thing in the world… So don’t tell me it wasn’t evil…!”

  “I never said that the people who killed your family weren’t bad people,” he counters, ignoring the horrified look on Ena’s face as he continues, “But neither were they demons, right? From what you’ve described, it doesn’t seem as though Vozradith actually had much to do with it… Though I admit they have a bad taste for comedy.”

  Eleanor jumps at him, pressing his body against the wall as she wraps her hands around his neck and squeezes, baring her teeth at him.

  “Do you think this is fucking funny?!” she murmurs, “How many?! How people had to die for a two-thousand-year-old monster to cross to this side?!”

  Sincir could’ve stopped her from tackling him, but chose not to; If this is what she needs to do to get it out of her system, then so be it.

  Facing her gaze directly, he smiles. “I guarantee you… Had I been summoned here the conventional way… Things wouldn’t have ended with just a small town being destroyed…” he manages to speak in spite of her grip over his neck, raising his hand in Ena’s direction to stop her from interfering as he does so. “I was… Born in Stormbay… Then abandoned by my human mother… Nobody died that day, unless you count my pride as a dy’s killer…”

  Eleanor clenches her teeth, having not noticed, or decided not care about the tears streaming down her face as she continues to squeeze his neck. However, Sincir can tell she believes him… If no other reason, because she sees the logic in what he is saying.

  “Why…?” she murmurs darkly, blue eyes wide, “What sort of sick object you have on this side, monster?”

  At this point, bck dots have begun to spread throughout his vision, and Sincir realizes he can no longer speak. Does she not realize she’s still squeezing?

  A nephilim is far stronger than a normal human…

  He is already prepared to cast a spell and free himself when Ena moves in and pulls Eleanor from him by force.

  “Eleanor, think! He could’ve killed both of us already! He didn’t have to tell us the truth, either!” Ena screams at her.

  The two of them struggle, but Eleanor doesn’t put much of a real resistance, now simply crying silently as Ena manages to press her against the opposite wall and force their gazes to meet.

  “We were at the orphanage’s gate, about to leave…! Leave without you, when Sincir noticed something was wrong! We didn’t know how many enemies there were, or how strong… And he run to save you, Eleanor! He didn’t even hesitate!”

  Eleanor gres at her, but her eyes don’t have their usual strength.

  “I’m sorry Father Anders died… But it wasn’t Sincir’s fault,” Ena continues, sustaining Eleanor’s gaze firmly perhaps for the first since their fight, now many days ago, “One of the things Father Anders taught us was that hate blinds us even the brightest, remember?! If not all humans are the same, and not all demi-humans are the same, then why should all demons?! Sincir is being honest… So why not listen to what he has to say before drawing conclusions?!”

  Sincir might’ve appuded, had he not been busy coughing the whole time…

  Damn it, she could’ve held back a little. He’s half her size, for fuck’s sake…

  In the end, he ends up having to cast a small healing spell to get his throat working properly again, which he clears, before turning toward the girls once more, who are now both staring at him as Ena continues to hold Eleanor against the wall by her shoulders.

  “I’ve already told you my objective, Eleanor. But I won’t lie to you two, I’ve done bad things over the course of my existence; Hell is a terrible pce, and I wouldn’t be here today had I not stood my ground and fought.”

  “Bad things…?” Ena murmurs, meeting his eyes unblinkingly, “Like what?”

  Well, most of them involved raping his enemies in one way or another, after having defeated them, ensving his enemies for the continued existence of his people, the occasional torture in order to extract information, an order of mass murder or two… And let us not forget what he did to Zuriel, in his misguided attempt at seeking peace with Heaven, as well as all of the women who he used and threw away, once he grew tired of them over the course of his life…

  As he continues to sustain Ena’s innocent, leaf-green eyes, Sincir smiles coyly; He might as well tell them he used to eat human babies for fun.

  “…Look, in my defense, I didn’t exactly have somebody to teach me right from wrong, while growing up. Does one of you two know what an incubus is, perchance?”

  As he says the word incubus, Eleanor pulls her legs away from him, as though having been burned, her expression changing to one of bare disgust.

  As Ena stares at the two of them in confusion, Sincir grimaces.

  “…That reaction was a bit much, don’t you think?”

  “All demons feed from some sort of Life Force,” Eleanor expins to Ena, ignoring him, “Incubi and succubi… They feed from… t-touching… Draining their lover’s life during the act… It is one of the most disgusting types out there.”

  Sincir rolls his eyes. “She means sex. We feed by having sex… But it doesn’t need to be fatal; In fact, if done carefully, it doesn’t have any sting consequences for the lover-”

  “The food, you mean,” Eleanor corrects, bringing a tense smile out of Sincir.

  “…Yes, for the food. Thank you, Eleanor. However, as I’ve already expined, my body is that of a human now, and my diet consists of vegetables and animal meat… Which, now that I think on it, makes it rather rich for a human to lecture my kind about our diet, when you survive from eating other creatures on a daily basis, yourselves.”

  “I’m a vegan,” Ena interjects, “So no meat for me, if I can help it.”

  Smiling, Sincir raises an eyebrow at Eleanor. “You hear that, Saint Eleanor? May I inquire about how many animals have thy ingested thus far, in order to survive? Some of them might have been mere puppies, I wager, or poor fathers and mothers, whose children depended on… Until a human hunter came along and sughtered the whole family, that is.”

  Eleanor grimaces. “Killing an animal and killing a human is not the same,” she says.

  Sincir shrugs. “Easy for you to say, when you’re not the animal in that equation, isn’t it? But the point I was trying to make is that I didn’t choose to be born in Hell, and I didn’t choose to be born an incubi, but I did choose to leave and look for something better, both for me and my people… Can you understand at least this much, Eleanor?”

  Pushing Ena away from her, Eleanor shakes her head, grimacing again. “So, you mean to bring a horde of those things here… I had forgotten you mentioned something of the sort before... Creator protect us.”

  Ena’s eyes widen. “Then, when you mentioned a kingdom…”

  Sincir smiles. “A kingdom of demons; Wouldn’t that be a sight to behold? But fear not, for I indeed to create a peaceful kingdom… Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered with leaving Hell, to begin with. And besides, Ena, you’d have a pce in it, as would anyone willing to follow our ws and work.”

  Eleanor snorts. “I admit, you’re both much crazier than I gaze you credit for.”

  “Is that so? You know, as my personal appendices, you’d both hold considerable status. Money, sex, power… But I guess you don’t care about any of those things, Eleanor, and as a nephilim, you wouldn’t have a problem being accepted anywhere else in the continent either.”

  Eleanor narrows her eyes at him. “I know what you’re doing. Incubi are experts at manipution, which they use to seduce their prey… I might not be able to stop you at present, but when this boat is ashore, I’m leaving.”

  Sincir produces his most innocent smile. “Is that so? In this case, as a sign of goodwill, I won’t stop you from going, but in return, I hope you won’t tell anybody about me… I wasn’t going to bring this up, but, demon or not, I did save your life a couple of times, back there.”

  Eleanor presses her lips together; her expression as though having eaten something rotten. Then, she shakes her head and turns away from the both of them.

  “Eleanor?” Sincir prompts, “You know I can’t let you leave if you don’t promise me you’ll keep quiet about this, right?”

  “…I won’t tell anybody,” she murmurs begrudgingly after a moment.

  Sincir smiles. At the very least, he knows she is the type to keep a promise once, she’s made it.