Chapter 174: Smoke

“Duchess Kapel!” Paladin Warren was the first to react, turning from me to dash toward the duchess.

Duke Reynard moved next, catching her arm just as Duchess Kapel fell to her knees, pale and shaking. Her eyes were wide, staring past and through me, and her mouth moved soundlessly.

Paladin Warren swept an arm at the crowd. “Give her space!” Holy magic radiated from his hands, and he ran them along her forehead and her abdomen, almost touching her russet dress.

Duke Reynard backed away as the acolytes who’d been watching me moved in, laying Duchess Kapel out on the ballroom floor as Paladin Warren got to work. One of the acolytes I recognized: Kord. The one Yevon was interested in and who’d seen me as a demon. Already, my mind had been trying and failing to understand why Paladin Warren could have failed to know of my status as a demon.

Perhaps he’d been here ahead of the event by several weeks and had missed the news.

But now? Yevon had a hand in this, and I didn’t like it. Is there anyone who’s not involved in this tonight?

Perhaps too late, I thought to look around the crowd. Shock was only just giving way to frantic whispering and the beginnings of a panic.

Was she poisoned? Can holy magic heal that?

I couldn’t see anything through the mass of people—and I didn’t know where to look either. What could have poisoned her?

I hadn’t been paying close attention to her ever since Paladin Warren had approached me, but the duchess and I had been eating from the same tray moments before the duke interrupted us. Did Duchess Kapel take something from a serving tray? Did I also consume poison but am immune?

Whatever the case, I couldn’t keep standing there.

“What can I do?” I asked Paladin Warren.

If the duke noticed my snub, he wisely decided to focus on the crowd instead. “Listen to Paladin Warren. Give him and his people space—I’m certain the duchess will be fine. For now, however, we must remain calm.”

“Poison,” Paladin Warren said, lifting his hand. He motioned for the duke to lean down, and whispered, though I could still pick out his words, “magical, demonic poison—I’m not strong enough to burn it away.”

While I could feel anger from the paladin and some of the acolytes—and worryingly none from the fallen duchess—I still felt no anger from Duke Reynard.

The man in question nodded solemnly. He motioned to a man standing near the main doors—one wearing thin armor under formal servant clothing. The man in question had stopped midway between the crowd and the door he’d been standing by, likely only intervening upon the duchess’s collapse. At the duke’s motion, he gave a short nod, and made motions of his own before darting out the door.

Duke Reynard then addressed the crowd, doing a rather impressive job of urging calm. But I didn’t pay attention to his words.

A magical, demonic poison?

Could such a thing exist? I had no reason to disbelieve Paladin Warren.

“Stay back,” the Paladin replied to my earlier question. “I know you could’ve done this.”

Could I have?

Regardless, I obeyed. Healing was rather the opposite of what I was good at. And as such, I redoubled my search for anything out of the ordinary. Up in the gallery, many hadn’t seen what had happened, and the duke’s words seemed most effective. Countess Elstein I saw still by the railing, watching.

Down on the main ballroom floor, everyone from the pianist to the other nobles started to look around. Then with more anxiety as Duke Reynard mentioned sparkling wine.

Sparkling wine… There’d been that servant! The one who’d slid by in front of everyone not a minute before the duchess collapsed. I looked for them, but I didn’t have a good read on their appearance. However, I did notice something. Rather a lack of something.

“Where are the servants?” I whispered to myself. Aside from one lonely, confused looking young woman, there were none in the entire ballroom.

“What about Marchioness Miller?” someone in the crowd shouted the moment Duke Reynard finished his speech. “Could she not have tainted poison, even if she’s supposedly not a demon?” I caught a glimpse of the woman who’d spoken: a red dress and pale hair.

The question seemed too perfect a setup. Too planned.

Except Duke Reynard didn’t follow through. And Paladin Warren was busy talking hurriedly with acolytes, some still tending to the duchess, who now showed an oily sheen of sweat that was smearing her makeup.

Instead, the duke shook his head. “I don’t believe so, Countess Relitz. Paladin Warren, after all, has cleared her good name. This must be the doing of another demon, perhaps related to the recent attacks. Do not worry, however. The estate has been locked down, and we and Paladin Warren will surely catch the—”

“Culprit,” a smooth, unnatural voice finished. “My my, I didn’t think I’d get to have any fun when Envy sent me here of all places.” There was a sigh, and I finally found the source of the voice: it was the remaining servant girl, her anxiety smoothed into languid ease and her face marred by a malicious, unnaturally-wide smile. “I shouldn’t doubt them so.”

I shook my head, breaking out of a fog that pulled suddenly at the edges of my vision. Around me, everyone was frozen, entranced. Duchess Kapel shuddered, her breath slowing.

“I know you’re unaffected, Wrath. So go ahead, fight me.” She drew a shimmering rapier out of nowhere and walked toward the back of the crowd, right for Countess Relitz who’d tried to set me up. “See how many humans you can save.”

“You’re not the one who poisoned her. There’s another.”

The demon in disguise pressed their thin blade against the countess’s back. The entranced woman continued to stare off into space, eyes wide asleep.

“Astute.” She rammed the blade home, gleaming tip pushing out through the woman’s dress. “Or not. Obvious. Banal.”

The entrancement on Countess Relitz broke, but her only reaction was a gurgle. There’d been no way I could have saved her. But I also knew from the assassination attempt in the pass south of Gedon: envy demons couldn’t just kill those they’d entranced.

And entranced people didn’t panic and cause a disaster.

So while the demon had been gleefully ramming her blade through the woman in question, I’d been working on my own plan: break Paladin Warren and his followers out. And just as the demon withdrew her rapier from the dying woman, I pushed my calculated wrath into Paladin Warren and the acolytes around him.

They’d know. They’d know for sure what I was now.

But they could defend others where I could not, from the blades in the shadows I did not see and could not block. And they would also prove an infallible defense that I was in no way responsible for at least one death.

If they sided with me.

Before the demon could stab another, I kicked off my heels and, still in human form, leapt at her.

***

Paladin Gareth Warren was having a bad evening. A bad evening tacked onto the end of a bad month. Preparations for the Winter Solstice Ball had been extensive and isolating, and he and his acolytes had been involved in every step.

Worse yet, his request for additional aid after finding a third servant under demonic influence had resulted in a single quiet acolyte. Kord was competent, but a single person.

Duke Reynard was close to an opponent of the Church of Dhias, although he had made their stay rather comfortable, and left few obstructions to their work. Gareth still didn’t trust the man—one of his personas was a lie, after all—but he’d had no reason to doubt him.

As such, when the impossibly-proportioned marchioness he’d been warned about had joined the evening’s festivities, Gareth had taken notice. At first, he’d assumed a trick of perspective, then some elaborate costume, but the woman really was tall enough to make two meters look short. She was also beautiful, in a brutal sort of way, but unnaturally so.

He hadn’t seen a lust demon take a form like hers, so he’d assumed Greater Conceit. However, her amiable behavior toward the prodding duchess and her later conciliatory actions dashed that theory entirely. However, her magic had been absolutely demonic.

If he didn’t know wrath demons as well as he did, Gareth would have assumed her a Greater Wrath of unusual form able to maintain a human disguise. A human disguise that was more than mere glamour. After she’d failed to react to holy magic, he’d been forced to reconsider, to entertain the idea that Marchioness Zarenna Miller was simply a part-ogre human who’d survived a stupefying amount of corruption.

Paladin Gareth Warren was mad he’d been so wrong. Furious he couldn’t identify what was going on with the marchioness, and downright enraged that someone had somehow poisoned Duchess Kapel with demonic poison right under his nose.

He was so mad that he could do something about it. Something more than standing into space staring at a pianist that was staring right back at him, frozen.

Gareth’s training kicked in. I’ve been entranced. This wrath is unnatural.

Immediately, he sequestered the emotion, walled himself off from it and prepared for the assault that didn’t come. Next, he looked to his acolytes all of whom were rousing, and gestured to Duchess Kapel on the ground.

Then, he looked up and out over the crowd. He looked just in time to see Marchioness Miller kick off her shoes and leap with inhuman speed at a serving girl who was holding a bloody, shimmering rapier. The scene, for a moment, fixated Gareth.

“Where are the servants?” Marchioness Miller had mumbled, and the gears of Paladin Gareth Warren’s mind turned as he made his decision.

***

I didn’t hear a shout or a call out, and I was almost caught off guard by the speed at which Paladin Warren recovered. Twisting, pushing down a thought that the tail I didn’t have right now might get hit, I dodged clear of his lance of holy magic, thrown over the still-frozen crowd.

The shape reminded me of Kartania’s but… blunter. Less refined. I was probably biased though.

My opponent’s eyes widened as my motion revealed the spell, and the surprise on her face lasted only a moment before the holy lance ripped through her off-arm’s shoulder. The first drop of demonic blood hadn’t yet hit the shining ballroom floor when I struck.

Curling a fist and stepping over the fallen countess’s blood, I lunged forward. Perhaps unbalanced by my ungainly human form, I missed the demon’s shocked, glamoured face, and instead got her in her good shoulder.

She spun from the force, sliding back on one foot as the shining sword left her hand, already dissolving. I pressed her, reaching out to grab her.

She disappeared under my hands, and I grabbed only a bloodied servant’s uniform.

Shit.

I turned on my aura sight, only just in time to catch the invisible demon retreating through a servant’s door. However, she left a trail of blood droplets smoking on the floor.

“She went through that door!” I shouted, pointing after her and turning to Paladin Warren and his acolytes.

Aside from two tending to the duchess, they were all staring at me, and I realized why almost immediately—I still had aura sight active, and my eyes were decidedly not human.

The mask was off then.

“Come on, let’s go get the bad demons!” I ignored, pointedly, that the shot I’d dodged could have been aimed at me.

The Church acolytes and their paladin stared.

“Do you really think I did this entrancing thing? Look at me. I’m Wrath, not Envy.” I debated dropping my human form, but I really liked this dress. Easy to move in despite its looks, and enchanted to boot. For stains and small tears and the like—not the kind of thing Lilly could do, but I wanted to keep it.

I almost ran off before I got a response.

Paladin Warren shook his head. Not as a denial, but more in disbelief. “Jeffrey, Thea, stay with the duchess. Clarisse, Thom, and Leonard, guard the ballroom. Kord and Lia with me. The rest spread out and case the estate. Keep your minds guarded and stay in pairs or more.

“And you,” he pointed at me as he walked through the entranced crowd, sword drawn. “Stay in my sight, do as I say, and don’t give me a reason to kill you.”

“Don’t make empty threats,” I replied, pride bristling. “But I’ll follow your lead. I think there’s more than one greater demon—and they’re planning something.”

“Or they’re running away.” Paladin Warren walked past me, then stopped, eyes glowing. “You first.”

I shrugged and started after the demon, picking up into a light jog the humans could keep up with. “Sure. Thanks for giving me a chance, I guess. More than most Church folks do.”

“Needs must,” Paladin Warren replied curtly.

On the other side of the door was an empty hallway, and the blood trail split at the first intersection. Crafty. “Did Kord not tell you of me?” I tried to study the aura of the blood.

“Do not try your tricks now—”

“She saved me, Paladin Warren, sir,” Kord said softly. “Well, she saved civilians at least—killed some lesser demons in Linthel shortly before I joined you.”

Paladin Warren sighed. “And you did not think to—never mind. I can’t tell this trail apart.”

“I can go one way,” I offered.

The paladin shook his head. “No, I will keep an eye on you. Kord, Lia.” He called upon his magic and a complex spell wreathed them in light. “I think the stronger trail is left—you two take right and I’ll go left with the demon. You know the signal.”

Kord nodded, and the pair ran off down one hallway.

I took the initiative and started down the other. “You’re suddenly alright being alone with me.”

“I can stall you long enough for the others to escape, if I need to.”

“Commendable. But your men trust you—don’t throw yourself away so easily.” The trail ended in a large but simple door, the hallway itself having lost much of the grandeur the estate seemed to have.

I kicked it in before Paladin Warren could respond.

Inside, the brutalized bodies of servants lay strewn about, some bereft of outer clothes. Some others looked very recent, including the one the wounded demon from earlier was pulling her sword out of. She’d retained her human glamour, but it was flickering, and I caught glimpses of a shining, almost prismatic mien underneath a face twisted in rage.

“So you found me,” the demon spat. “Hmm? Going to let me speak, are you?”

“Talk,” I growled. “What’s your plan?”

The envy demon laughed, the sound twisting outside of human range and distorting. “Something marvelously simple, though not all played their part perfectly. No matter.”

“What of the poison?” Paladin Warren shouted.

“A request, of course,” the envy demon replied candidly. “Anyway, I think this has been long enough.”

She disappeared again, but this time I was ready. And to my surprise, Warren was too. What could only be described as a luminescent fog filled the room, and the other demon coughed into the burning mist, stumbling, invisibility flickering as the after-image she’d made of herself shattered into motes of light.

I grabbed her, spinning her around. Paladin Warren, shaking his head against what was probably a formidable mental assault, swung his blade and took her head.

Her human form dissolved, leaving a lithe body covered in a pattern reminiscent of shattered stained glass. Nearly human, the extra-long limbs and thin, four-fingered hands threw the body into an uncanny sort of place. I looked away, past the severed head whose six silvery eyes were still wide with surprise, and beheld again the butchery in the room.

Paladin Warren and I both glanced at the servants’ bodies and shared an eerily similar frown, eyes widening as we met each other with matching gazes.

“We should rejoin the search,” I said quietly.

“…Agreed,” Paladin Warren replied. His lips were drawn thin, and I felt anger within him, but I didn’t think it was at me.

Something tickled my nose and I sniffed, eyes widening and head snapping to the doorway.

“De—Marchioness?” my hopefully-more-than-temporary ally said, already jogging to the door.

I followed him, and quickly. “Do you smell that?”

He sniffed, and his own eyes went wide. “Smoke.”