It was official, I did not like this whole, traveling and camping in the forest bologna. I was a city girl, damn it! Why was I sleeping on sticks and worrying about getting eaten by bears in my sleep. Though, given I was on Zearsa now, there were worse things than bears out in these woods at any given time.

  Don't get me wrong, I had spent more than my fair share of nights out on the streets, in god awful weather, and with the most degenerate of people around. But it was not the same as being out in the wilderness! When I say it gets dark at night, I mean its pitch black. Every noise is automatically a monster coming to eat me, I am sure, and you are just out in the open. No stores to pop into for like ten minutes of warmth, no buildings to sit behind to block the wind, nor over hangs to block the rain.

  I hated every second of it!

  And, though he did not voice his objections as strongly as my own whiny ass, I could tell that Edric was not the biggest of fans either. Though, He had been born a prince. Also, even as a slave, I doubt he did much back packing out in the great unknown either.

  Pride was the only one who seemed wholly unaffected. I didn't think he particularly relished roughing it, just that it didn't seem to bother him all that much. Not like it did me, at any rate.

  Three nights out of town and we were all crowded around the bank of a stream, filling our water bags and getting a drink. The weather had gotten colder and colder each day, despite that it had felt fairly mild before leaving the settlement.

  "Temperatures fluctuate a lot in the autumn, East of the Chasm." Edric stated, filling up a second water bag, kneeling next to the stream. "To the north west, toward North Sterner River, Up toward the elven territory of Verveara it stays quite mild all year round, but rains a lot around this time."

  Capitalizing on this burst of information, I reached into my bag and I pulled out our map, keeping a firm hold, not wanting the wind to take the parchment out of my hands and into the water. I unrolled it and looked down at the slightly yellow paper, the world of Zearsa splayed out before me. This hadn't been the only time I had looked at it since we set out.

  The stella Empire occupied the whole of the east coast, stopping only where it met the Verveara Forest to the north- which covered the entirety of the northern portion of the map- and the huge mountain range labeled Reivier, blotting out the south. Sandwiched between forest and mountains were the human countries, crowded around the section of the map called 'The Chasm'.

  Edric stood, tucked away the water bags, and stood at my side, looking over my shoulder, down at the map.

  He pointed down at the Chasm. "Everything is a mess there." He said, brow furrowed like he was scraping his memory for everything he could muster about geography. "One moment it is as hot and wet as Verveara and the next its a blizzard. It is from the Chasm that all monsters are said to originate."

  On the map it looed like a rather large forest with a great black bird claw in the middle of it. Id say it had nearly as much land mass as Stella did, but with none of the little dots with tiny writing labeling cities.

  I watched as Edric drew his pale finger northward. "This is where we are headed: The Vespertine Kingdom. My family has ruled it since its founding. The Capital is there, near the center."

  He pointed to a small dot not quite center of the northern kingdom. I squinted my eyes and looked closer till I could pick out the name 'Vesper'. "Real fond of that last name then, aren't you all?" I commented with a raised eye brow.

  Edric shrugged. "Many nobles and royals tend to slap their names on things. I'd imagine anyone willful enough to go against Stella and form an entirely separate country would be just as self important."

  "Fair enough..."

  "These are all other Human kingdoms, though they are mostly much smaller than Vespertine and the Stella Empire." He said, indicating the smaller kingdoms, all of them bordered off on the map with feint dotted lines. There were many, and the spanned from the west along a large river till that river hit a lake. They followed along yet another river branching off the lake to the south, dividing the human nations from the southern mountain range. "Everything west of the Sterner Rivers, and the lake they are connected to, are beast kingdoms."

  Beast kingdoms? Like, more monsters?

  Maybe seeing my confused look, Edric elaborated, though not in a way that answered the question that had been on my mind. "None of the kingdoms their are labeled, though I was told that there are just as many there as there are amongst the human nations. Just as this map does not have any of the elven settlements, nor the Dwarven ones to the south in the Reivier Mountains..."

  "Wait, there are dwarves here too?" I asked, though I wasn't sure why that surprised me. I mean, where there are elves, there are bound to be dwarves, right?

  "There are." Confirmed Pride, who had been sitting quietly till now. "And, I believe the Mistress' confusion was not over the little dots, but rather the term 'Beast Kingdoms'."

  "Yes, that was what I was wondering about. Are they monsters? I wasn't aware that monsters were smart enough to have kingdoms."

  Edric shook his head. "Sorry, I forget that you wouldn't know most of this stuff. The beast Kingdoms are governed over by the kobold races."

  "Kobolds?" I asked. The only thing that that brought to mind were little goblin like people...

  "They are a race of people whom share characteristics of animals. In my day they were viewed as a lesser race by humanity, often treated poorly."

  Oooooh. Okay, I got it now. They were like, cat people and stuff. Again, I should not have been surprised by this.

  Edric sighed. "They still are in many cases. At least here in the Warring states, as well as in the Stellarian Empire. And, until quite recently, they did not have all the same rights as humans, elves, or dwarves in Vespertine either. It was my grandmother, the las t queen, who changed the laws so that they would be treated just the same as any other citizen. Same goes for your own race, the demons."

  "Hmmm. Sounds like I would like this woman..." I stated, thinking that, if the laws really were changed so recently, then there would still be quite a bit of predigests in the kingdom.

  Edric's lip twitched slightly. "I think that she would like you as well, Miss Nyx. She is full of righteousness and stubbornness that would make her look favorably on someone like you."

  I wasn't really sure how to take that one. "You got along well with her then?"

  "I suppose so. Though she was a woman of little patients. She may be gone now. She was quite old, the last time I saw her..."

  I felt bad for the prince, as was curios. But I also didn't want the man to shut down like I was sure he would, so I decided to change the subject from his family. "What about this?" I asked, pointing to a swath of the map to the far West, past what he had said were the beast kingdoms. It was labeled 'The Endless Sands' so I thought that it was safe to assume it was a desert.

  "No one lives there officially." Stated Edric, looking relive for the change of subject as well. "It is a great desert that, as far as I am aware, no one has ever seen the other side off. As the name suggests, it may very well go on forever."

  "Okay, well what about the lands beyond Reivier or Verveara?" Surly the mountains and the forest were not as hard to pass through as a seemingly unending desert.

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  "I really don't know. I imagine there must be, but those regions have been lorded over by the dwarves and elves since time immemorable. If something does lie beyond them, you would have to ask them about it."

  "How about we just focus on the land we currently are wandering through?" Pride said, standing and shaking spray off his dark fur. "I am quite sure it will be quite some time before you need worry about these far off lands."

  "Yeah, alright..." I sighed, rolling up the map once again. So much for our cheery chat. Back to slogging through the forest it was then.

  A day and a half later Edric informed me that we were very close to Kardem. I was glad he could read the words of the map, but even more glad that he could, somehow, tell how far we had traveled, and how far we had yet to go. According to him it was nothing so accurate, just an understanding built up over years of looking at maps.

  "Why in the world would a Prince be looking at maps that much?" I had sighed, cranky from several nights of not so great sleep.

  Edric's lip twitched. "I dreamed of travel, growing up. I'm the fourth son, and there fore there wasn't much for me to do where the kingdom was concerned. So I spent a good amount of my time either cooped up, studying the world, or convincing my father to send me along with royal messengers and the like, just so I could see other kingdoms, or even the furthest reaches of our own."

  Hmm... Maybe he was starting to open up at last?

  "I guess I could understand that." I said. "In my world you just had to look at your phone and it would tell you where you were, where you were going, and how long it would take to get there. heck, it would even tell you about traffic accidents, near by restaurants, and the weather while it was at it."

  "What fascinating magic." He said, sounding endlessly curious. During our week long trip, he had started to get a little more comfortable around Pride and I, and began to speak to us more like companions rather than master and slave. I was pretty happy about this, because being treated as someone's master, kind of put my hair on end, if I was being honest. "Were these 'phones' the same as Living Maps?"

  "No. There was no magic in my old world. Just science, and a lot of other peoples hard work. Regular people like myself just enjoyed the fruits of their labor. As for the cost... well, I wouldn't say phones were cheep, by any means, but most people had them all the same. they were nearly essential, really."

  "Tristan had mentioned such marvels from time to time." Piped up Pride who was walking at the front of our little line up. "But, he really did not bring up his old life too often. Mond you, he had been in Zearsa for quite some time when he made I and the other Progenitors..."

  As Pride spoke, I looked side long at Edric. i could see the curiosity burning inside of him. He wasn't, almost desperately, to know what in the world the dog like demon was talking about. It wasn't the first time Pride or I had brought up pretty fantastical things in passing with out elaborating on them. I was betting that the 'need to know' was eating the poor man up inside.

  But, when neither of us simply gave up the information, he gave up. It was like we were all in an information stand-off. I wasn't about to just fork over personal details for free knowing that they made for a pretty good bargaining chip, and Edric still had his issues to work out before he was willing to tell Pride and I much of anything. As for the dog? I didn't think he really cared one iota about Edric's past so long as he did the jobs I tasked him with, nor did he really care weather or not the Prince knew more about his past. He also did not care enough to fork over that knowledge either.

  I was sure pride would keep his mouth shut till I started speaking.

  I was about to start another round of complaining, just because it had been about two hours since I had, when Pride suddenly halted in the road.

  "What?" I asked, suddenly on alert. Edric drew his sword behind me.

  "I hear something. A voice..." Stated the demon.

  "People on the road?" I asked, wings twitching on my back, ready for action. Pretty hard to believe that only a short while ago I was sticking to the walls of a dungeon while others fought, hoping that I was left alone. Now at the first sign of trouble, I was gearing up for a fight.

  Pride shook his head. "No, they are off the road... And I am pretty sure it is a child."

  "A child?" Asked Edric, concern evident in his voice.

  "That, or some grown man has a very high pitched voice and keeps wailing 'mommy!' over and over again."

  I snorted, then sighed. There may be only ten really bad things I had never done, but abandoning a little kid in a forest of monster wasn't one of them. "Lets go find them."

  "Very well."

  Pride lead us off the dirt road and into the loamy forest, where the trees had grown fairly close together. We were walking for only a couple minutes when I, also, started to hear the voice of what sounded like a small girl, crying.

  Sure enough, around a tree, I found myself standing behind a small child, sitting on the ground, curled into a ball and crying faintly. She wore patched and frayed cloths with an equally well used cloak and at her side sat a small basket, over turned and spilling some kind of plant matter.

  I shared a worried glance with Edric, both of us confused as to why there would be a little girl wandering around a forest. I was worried about scaring her... I was a demon now, after all. But I wasn't planning on hiding from her, so better to pull the Band-Aid off early.

  I stepped forward and cleared my throat, causing the child to gasp and nearly tumble over in fright. She half laid on the ground, looking up at me with wide green eyes, her pretty red hair disheveled and covered in twigs.

  "Don't be scared." I said rather lamely. I was never very good with kids. i was of the firm belief that I never was one myself. "I know I look a little scary, but I promise I just want to help."

  Her wild eyes jumped from me to Edric, then to Pride who was half hidden in the trees. Luckily the hellhound had made sure to be in his average dog size at the moment, so the girl's fear did not rise too much more.

  "Err... I'm Nyx. What's your name?"

  Her lip trembled for a second but then she decided to answer. "Tilly... I mean, Matilda. But Momma calls me Tilly." She said in a high, sweet voice, tears still in her eyes.

  "Do you mind if I call you Tilly as well?" The girl nodded hesitantly. "Okay. Well, how did you get here Tilly? Where is your Momma?"

  I squatted next to the girl while Edric stood over me, keeping an eye out for monsters. As I began collecting Tilly's basket of what I assumed were herbs, the prince flashed the girl a smile. It was forced, but it was the first full smile I had seen on my slave, and I had to admit that it did make him look rather princely. Albeit a pale, scrawny, poorly dressed prince.

  "I was out with Aunty Ritz. Momma isn't feeling well and we wanted to go get medicine. But then there were sounds in the forest, and Aunty Ritz told me to hide in a bush..."

  "Then what happened?" I asked. I didn't have too much faith in humanity, but I rather hoped that whom ever this Aunty Ritz was, she wouldn't just abandon a little girl in a monster infested forest.

  Tilly shrugged, getting over her initial fear enough to also start collecting the small green and brown roots and leaves. "I hid like she said, but then the sounds started again, and I figured I would crawl to the next bush... then the next."

  "And before you knew it you were lost?" Edric asked the little girl.

  Tilly snuffled and nodded, tears welling in her eyes once again. "I tried calling for Aunty Ritz... Then Momma. But I can't find anyone, and I can't remember where the village is either."

  "Are you from Kardem?"

  "Yes! That's right!" She said excitedly.

  "Well, that is where we are headed." I said, picking up the girls basket and helping her to her little feet. "How about you come with us, and we all go together."

  "Alright!"

  I turned to Edric and asked: "Are we far from town?"

  Edric frowned. "I had thought that we were still half a days travel from Kardem." He stated, worried eyes on Tilly who had now taken a death grip on my hand. So much for stranger danger. I was a demon, Girly! Didn't your Momma never teach you to not trust a person immediately... Oh well, it was much easier to get the girl home if she wasn't afraid and bawling the whole time, so I shouldn't complain. Still, at this girls age, I would have spit into a random demon's eyes and ran off, taking my chances on my own.

  "How long have you been lost Tilly?" I asked the girl. There was no way that she could have wandered that far from home, was there?

  "I think a couple hours now." She said sadly. "Aunty Ritz and I came here on Frufa. Oh! Frufa is Aunty Ritz's horse. She is old, but Aunty Ritz said it was okay to ride her, cause it was an emergency."

  That explained how she got so far from the village then.

  "I would guess that, once your aunt couldn't find you, she took Frufa back to Kardem." Stated Edric, looking off into the trees. I assume he was looking in the direction of town, but I had no clue. I was severely directionally challenged, after all.

  "She would have just left?" I asked, angry on the girl's behalf.

  This time Edric shook his head. "Not so much left. More like, she would have gone for help. I take it your aunt is not a skilled adventurer?" He asked Tilly.

  That was a thing? Like in video games... seriously? Then again, I was in a dungeon recently, I was turned into a demon and was now traveling with a prince and an animal companion. This was either some messed up video game nonsense, or one sick and twisted Disney Princess movie plot. I was more comfortable with the game theory.

  "No. Aunty Ritz helps out at the mill."

  "Then, she would not have done very well on her own out here. My guess would be that she would have ridden the horse back to town at speed, went to enlist the help of someone with the appropriate skills, and is now with your mother, likely apologizing a great deal for loosing you."

  Tilly sniffed sadly, but seemed to agree with Edric. I hoped he was right, and the woman didn't just abandon the girl...

  "But, it's getting late, and we do not have a horse." He said, not mentioning the fact that if we really needed, Pride could have grown in size and carried us. No doubt Tilly was traumatized enough. Probably why my hellhound friend still hadn't said anything. "Lets keep heading for Kardem and keep our eyes open for a good campsite. Then, in the morning, we can get you home before lunch."

  This last sentence was spoken with yet another smile directed at the little girl, probably looking to comfort her. I got the feeling that Edric was good with kids. At least one of us was.