~~~Ruler Leah of Acelet~~~

Pink petals drifted down from the cherry blossom tree above me, gently covering me and the codling next to me in piles of pink flowers.

I snickered, watching Codfather Azalea of the Codlands try and fail to avoid a falling flower, instead accidentally inhaling it through their gills, making her choke and cough. They gave me an offended side eye as I continued to laugh instead of helping.

"You-" Az hacked, bits of petal falling out of their mouth as they tried to root out the bits that had made it into their throat- "are so mean," she complained.

Laughing more, I reached over and gently picked out the stem of the blossom off of them, letting them handle the shredded flower. "They're harmless if you just sit still and don't inhale them-"

Az sniffed. "I bet you did that on purpose." Their mock glare melted as I gave her a light shove on her shoulder, giggles escaping them too as their face scrunched up with the effort not to smile.

"What, I told the flower to specifically fall so that if you moved in one specific direction, it would go into your gills?" I replied, dramatically placing a hand on my chest and flopping into her lap. "Oh no, you've revealed my evil plan! I'm ruinedddd, all the other villains will make fun of me nowwww–"

They rolled their eyes at me, her smile peeking out even as they tried to stifle it. "Stop, you're making me laugh," she complained, poking me. I blinked up at them, widening my eyes innocently.

This is supposed to be an alliance meeting, not a date, my daemon complained in my mind, sitting a few feet away from me and the ruler of the Codlands and giving us a disgruntled look. Quit being all lovey-dovey already-

Karl was my daemon, a spirit every woodland faerie was born with that took the form of an animal and accompanied us throughout our lives. Our daemons could speak to us telepathically, and were completely sentient and intelligent, sometimes even smarter than their faeries themselves.

"It's not 'lovey dovey', Karl, we're just playing around, chill," I told Karl, sitting up, cherry blossoms falling off of me onto the soft grass we were sitting on.

"Is Karl being a killjoy again?" Az teased, knowing the cat shaped daemon could understand them. He frowned (as much as a cat could frown, anyways) and stood up, hopping into one of the lower branches of the tree to hang over my head.

His voice appeared in my mind a moment later, miffed tone evident in his mindvoice. There is a demon terrorizing the continent, we do not have time to laze about.

My smile faded at the reminder. Az, seeing my sudden mood drop, scooted closer and pulled me into a hug, giving Karl a disappointed look.

"Thanks," I told Azalea, pulling back after another few moments. "Karl is right, though, we do need to talk about defenses and the demon and things."

Azalea frowned, confused. "What is there to talk about? We've already got all the guards on max alert, traps are set everywhere, civilians have their evacuation plans- is there anything else we can do?"

We both thought for a moment. Even Karl was silent, tail swishing as he considered the question.

"What if we dropped the tariffs?" I said, the slightly insane idea suddenly occurring to me. "Like, normally that'd be dumb, because domestic imports would suffer, but right now, the priority is making sure everyone is safe. If people can more easily afford emergency supplies, they'd be safer, even if a few businesses would lose a bit of money to inter-empire businesses."

"And we could compensate those businesses by offering them royal trades where they supplied nobles directly instead of commoners, that way they won't lose any money either!" Az added, nodding furiously.

And it'll promote cooperation between citizens to all help each other be safe, Karl said, ears perked up.

"Yes, yes, we can do this," I said, mostly to myself. "Do you have a piece of paper so we can write this down? I don't wanna forget," I asked Azalea, who turned around to rummage in their bag.

While Az was searching, Karl sat up, ears flattening back with a hiss as he jumped down from the tree to stand next to me, fur on end.

"What's wrong?" I asked him, Az looking up in confusion at the furious daemon.

And then everything went dark.

I shot to my feet, Karl's growls still audible as he curled around my legs, hissing viciously.

Moving blindly, I reached out and found Azalea's shoulder, familiar scales under my hand as we stepped closer, back to back in a defensive position.

I pressed my fingers against the rune I had tattooed on the inside of my forearm, a dim green glow faintly visible through the unnatural darkness as it activated. The familiar shape of my bow appeared in my hand a second later, along with the weight of my quiver, full with arrows, settling on my waist.

I pulled an arrow out and nocked it, ready to shoot at a moment's notice as soon as my sight was clear. Barring that, I could just stab someone point-blank with the arrow itself.

A sinister laugh echoed through the darkness. I had heard it before, two weeks ago, when the demon had attacked Acelet and hurt so many innocents.

I narrowed my eyes, trying and failing to use my natural night vision to see through the shadows.

"It's the demon, I whispered to Az behind me, and I felt them nod, the tips of their ear fins brushing against the back of my head. I was sure she had their greatspear out, a strong spear made of actual bone for the handle, carved with a motif from every Codfather who had ever wielded it, and the strongest steel for the head forged in the heat of an underwater volcano. It was absolutely epic, a relic passed down through generations of Codfathers from the founding of the Codlands.

Az shifted behind me, and I heard her hiss, "We should try to get out of the darkness; it has to have a limit."

I nodded, reaching around to grab their hand in mine for a quick squeeze. Then we began to move, slowly but surely heading forward towards what I knew was the forest in a few miles. The fields outside Tulip weren't that large, just some space for animals to graze and children to play before the wilderness began.

We'd have to be careful, though. There was a river around halfway through the field, deep and very fast moving. If we fell in, it'd be very hard to get out without drowning, for me at least. Az was a codling, she'd be fine.

If we could get to the forest, the demon would be completely outmatched. Everyone knows better than to fight a woodland faerie in a forest.

I really, really hoped the demon didn't know better.

When I estimated we were around halfway towards the woods, the darkness vanished out of nowhere, and I automatically spun to go back-to-back with Az.

Before I could, something strong and painful hit me with the force of a battering ram from behind, and I fell, grass cushioning the impact as I groaned.

I heard Azalea shout a battle cry as she attacked, the sound of metal meeting metal reaching my ears as I got onto my knees, then up onto my feet, picking up my bow from where I had dropped it.

The demon was locked in battle with Az, dark broadsword clashing with their greatspear. There was blood trickling from Az's cheek where the demon must have landed a punch, and the demon was favoring his left leg, probably from Az smacking it with her tail, which was powerful enough to break a hole in solid wood if they put enough force into it.

Nocking my fallen arrow, I shot at the demon, which he somehow sensed coming from behind and dodged, falling back.

I ran forward to stand by Az, another arrow already on my string as Az raised her spear, both of us ready to fight.

"You should give up while you still can," Az called over to the demon, a simple fact.

"It's two versus one, this isn't a fair fight," I added. Facts were the best, especially when they were in my favor.

The demon laughed. "You're right! Get a couple dozen more people here and it might be fair," he said, manic grin stretching across his face.

But that doesn't make sense? A fair fight is with an equal number of opponents, or if- ohhhhh.

The demon was saying we were so underskilled that it would take adding several people to our side for his skill to equate ours.

The correct neurotypical response here would be to snort, right?

Azalea beat me to it, giving the demon a deadpan look and saying, "That's not a fair fight, that's an equal fight."

The demon blinked. His voice came out normal, like any other human's when he said, "What- ohhhhh, yeah, sorry-"

He cleared his throat, returning to the menacing demon voice. "Bring a few dozen more people and it'll be an even fight, you happy?"

"We didn't ask you to fix it, dude, we were just saying," I said, shrugging.

The three of us, a demon, a merling, and a woodland faerie, all stood awkwardly for a couple of moments, trying to figure out the correct neurotypical way to continue our battle after the grammar issue we had just run into.

"This is dumb," Azalea announced out loud. "Can we just go back to fighting?"

The demon nodded rapidly, raising his sword. "Yes, please, I hate awkward silences-"

He lunged towards us, corruption bursting from the ground in massive tentacles that rushed towards us.

Azalea attacked the tentacles as I went for the demon, shooting arrow after arrow that he deflected with his sword easily, determined smirk visible on his face as he got closer.

I slung my bow over my shoulder and unsheathed my shortsword, dodging his first attack as he swiped down. There was no way I could block a blow from that giant sword with my sword, which was almost small enough to be called a dagger instead of a shortsword.

I rolled behind him and slashed for the back of his shoulder, almost getting him if he hadn't spun around with unnatural grace and stabbed at me, a blow I barely avoided by scrambling back, almost falling over.

The corruption kept spreading, Azalea rapidly losing the battle to the regenerating tentacles. The demon kept advancing on me, and it was getting harder and harder to avoid the blows as he sped up with what was clearly dark magic, no one could move that fast without magical assistance.

We were both cornered against the river, back to back, Az fending off the corruption and me dodging the demons' blows.

Right as it looked like it was all over, Karl suddenly jumped onto the demon's back out of nowhere, yowling furiously as he clawed the demon's shirt to shreds and began to absolutely destroy the corrupted skin underneath.

As the demon screamed and flailed, trying to get the furious cat off of him, me and Az had a moment to concoct an escape plan. Defeating the demon wasn't an option anymore, he was too strong.

Although, watching him get mauled by a cat was pretty funny–

"Trust me?" Az asked– bringing my attention back to our imminent demise– and I nodded, meeting the pale green eyes of my partner with my own golden brown, both of us slit-pupiled thanks to our respective species.

The moment ended; the demon charging in time with the tentacles, a wicked grin on his face as he sensed victory.

Then Az shoved me into the river, jumping in as well as the demon yelled something I couldn't hear through the sound of rushing water in my ears.

Tentacles plunged into the river after us, Az wrapping an arm around my waist and swimming as fast as she could go, powerful tail propelling us through the current as I tried to keep hold of my shortsword to slash at the receding tentacles.

Breaking the surface to let me breathe every minute or so, we continued swimming until the shade of the trees covered the surface of the river, safe within the forest's grasp.

Azalea pulled me out of the water, Karl trotting out of the bushes and shaking himself as he sat next to me, disgruntled.

He did not taste good, Karl confided to me. Like if someone took normal tasty human and mixed in a bunch of, I don't know, weed killer or something-

"Probably the corruption," I said, and Az gave me a confused look.

I pointed to Karl. "He said that the demon tastes like weed killer."

They coughed, barely choking back a laugh. "Now I'm imagining the demon as a slogan on a weed killer bottle, stop-"

I snickered. The big bad scary demon, killing weeds and grinning at a camera to get people to buy this specific weed-killing potion as opposed to the one from the store across the street.

Now that was a good mental image–

"Hey- what if we could use a weed-killer on the demon?" I said, looking up at Az.

She started laughing, and I shook my head, fighting my own smile. "No, no, seriously though, like what if we went to Hylia, since that's magic central, and asked Sir Seth? Maybe she could brew up something that could harm the demon!"

Az's eyes widened, understanding what I meant. "We could take a sample of the corruption, and she could use it to make a demon killer, oh my cod, yes-"

I nodded, and Az nodded back at me, and Karl nodded next to us. It was a nodding consensus. Nodding was a fun stim, as long as you didn't do it so long your neck started hurting.

"It's a plan, then?" Azalea asked once the nodding consensus had concluded. I went to nod, thought better of it, and said instead, "Yeah, we can go now! Hylia isn't far, it's just south a bit."

Let's go! Karl cheered, climbing up a nearby low-hanging branch and jumping down to land on my shoulder, curling up around my neck like a purring black scarf.

"Onwards we go!" I declared, and immediately walked into a tree.

Ow.