The wind carried the demoness aloft, and as she soared over the endless landscape she couldn't help but marvel at one thing. Not the courage of Barintacha or his golden bride. Not the grandiosity of the once mighty castle or the will of its warriors.

It was her Lord's insurmountable luck. 'What are the odds that I of all people would come into his service? I who once lived in this very land, the one person in all His Majesty's service who would know what names to give to the delusional old man to make him relax and open up to me? Who else but I would remember even fragments of the old stories of my village? And the old man at the university… he's ancient, he could die any day, but he just happened to have a book detailing some of the history of my homeland and contain references I alone would recognize? What are the odds that he would save my life the very hour I was meant to die?'

Such thoughts drowned her mind in disbelief, while she understood that she was recognized by the three geniuses of Nazarick as someone of an exceptional mind, not dramatically lesser than themselves, Vanysa knew she had one advantage that they never could. 'They're so blinded by His Majesty that they can't see the man within the skeleton.' Her heart ached for him over that. She was one of only a handful even within Nazarick who knew what happened during their grand morphomancy experiment. The day they failed to transform him into an Angel Lord capable of reproduction, and instead reverted him to a human. And out of those who knew the event had taken place at all, she was the only one to know why.

For all their brilliance and belief in his godhood and their worshipful devotion, they were all in her mind, blind to the niceties of his needs. A need for friendship, companionship, a welcome face who wanted nothing but his presence. Their love for him was bound up in their service. Even the Pope herself, who called him father and loved him with all her heart… 'Even she cannot see the man.'

'I wonder if it's because I bear the memories of the girl who loved him when she was but a peasant? How much of her am I… and how much a mere puppet on the strings of magic he secured to give me life?' That kept her up for more than one night, but the strangeness of her nature both before and after her change, and her bizarre and outlandish thinking led to results with great regularity, and made even her less intelligent mind valuable to her beloved Demi.

And as she contemplated all of this in the back of her mind, from the luck of her lord to her place in his world, she kept her eyes scanning the ground, looking for signs that only a handful in the world might have known to look for.

The cool air swept over her skin, and the noise of her occasional flap to keep her aloft provided a steady and comfortable rhythm to pass the time. Her dark hair blew back behind her in the wind, and the world seemed to go on forever.

Try as she might, the vast world seemed to have swallowed up every trace of events so far in the past that she couldn't say just when they were at all. Time healed the wounds of the dead, and the clues evaded her. There were no evident 'battle scars' from a clash, and the fight, if there were one, would have been a skirmish, leaving little behind.

'There's only one real chance here… fuck. Fuck. Fuck.' She cursed and looked for something else instead.

The beastmen, to the best of her knowledge, had always been at least somewhat rational, if conservative. They liked things how they were and tended not to change unless they were forced to do so. 'Like how His Majesty walked through their country and crashed their entire royal house and city down around them.' That was one of her favorite memories, and a trace of a smile spread over her face.

'If they've always been that way, then like most of their cities, their villages frequently began as encampments of some sort. And maybe, just 'maybe' they have a legend around there that will help me…' Vanysa had to hope she was right, if she wasn't…? 'Does My Lord have an infinite supply of luck? Or can it run out? I hope not, because I could use some.' She told herself as she finally spied a small village in the distance.

'Just get it over with. Just get it over with and you'll barely ever have to even look at beastmen ever again. Just get over with. Don't skin them, don't slice out their eyeballs or rip their beating hearts still throbbing from their chests… just get what you came here for and get out. If they're alive and here, they aren't the ones to ruin your life… they didn't kill him. Everyone who did that is dead and can't hurt you anymore, and if they lived, they're no longer a match for me anyway.'

It was about as comforting a thought as she could hope for, and with that she began her slow descent. She landed on the opposite side of a small hill which overlooked the village, and drew her wings into her body. The red flesh of her demonic form was gone, her hair had returned to the shining gold of her former humanity, and at a glance nobody would know she wasn't just another traveler.

She walked away from where she landed without so much as breaking her stride and headed for the top of the hill. At the peak she could look down over the village, it was surrounded by hills over which grass grew thick and green and beckoned her on as it waved in the breeze.

It bent beneath her feet with every step forward, and a small part of her, that part of her which would always remember being a scared little girl imbued with the fears of her mother and village for the coming of the monsters of the land beyond the border which was said to be longer than one could walk in a lifetime. 'Why did they have to come here…? Why?' Vanysa recalled the question of her earliest youth, her mother's face, a gentle and loving expression clouded dark with fear, as vivid as it was so many years before, and the demoness recalled the feel of her mother's arms tightening around her body to comfort her.

And she recalled her answer. "Because the gods mock us, the children of cowards and traitors… because we're not chosen of the gods like the priests say. If we were, why would this be our lives…?"

As she recalled the conversation and descended into the view of the village, a thought came to mind, a thought which began to make the whole story make sense…