Shifting crowds of perusing merchants and hardworking sailors were parted upon the bow of the recently arrived group; the restless perseverance of the daemon prowling in plain sight swiftly trodded between winding trails of busy bodies and countless eruptions of offers and sales, the very essence of the renowned Port Zekson. Each concentrated sense refracting over each and every word of interest or importance; the usual gathers of casual talk between patient salesmen a plenty sometimes passing to the group themselves, such as autonomy, which only brought a particular daemonic lizard to mind. In additon to that, it was learned from the neaby moping of an experienced sailor that the Abbey had garnered full control over the major expanse of the endless ocean; controlling the flow of people, goods, and even information.

Exactly what the great Sea Fortress; Vortigern, was used for.

After the instant refusal of a Samurai's idea to make money off of potentially selling Dyle's tails should they regrow - no mind the definite shut down of cooking them for meals at Laphicet's wandering thoughts - the crew came across that same merchant from before who had assisted them in their docking. Waiting absent-mindedly aside a warehouse, the mysterious sailor relayed how another seemingly great big shot of the fiendish pirate life, had been stumped and captured by the valiant Royal Navy; scoring another tally upon the four grand Pirate Kings of the world, leaving only Aifread and his crew as the last who reign free over rocking azure waters.

"For a merchant, you really seem to like these pirates," Velvet inferred with a contemplative narrow of her eyes, and the sailor shuffled with a broad grin and confident posture.

Eizen stepped in, vouching for the long-lasting presumed ally of the Van Eltia's infamous crew, "He may be crooked but money's not all he's after. If profit was his only desire, he could have made more by selling us out."

With a great exhaling snicker at this valued allegiance, the dock trader scratched his head and explained the simple goal; "But that'd be too boring, don't you think? The fun's in making a killing by breaking the rules."

Slapping the sailor's shoulder with a laugh of respect, the battle-hungry Yaksha grinned widely at such a reason, "You're a funny guy!" the man appreciably chuckled.

"And that's why Aifread goes through him whenever we need to dock here."

Velvet shuffled with thought, but the strange sailor seemed to be trusted to their upmost secrecy by the biggest pirate of the seas; no reason for concern. So, she dropped her frown, "Hmm... Well, I can't say I've ever met a human like him." A clear of a throat racked from the side, and she sighed tiredly at the meaningless reminder. "You're different. Much more annoying," the daemoness huffed with a turned back.

"Thought so, better get used to it, moody," Sarid graciously accepted with a flash of expectancy to an extra bitter remark, however as the group began to part away from the cheery merchant, there was an obvious growl emitted from their wrathful daemon at front. "...Kidding," he retracted with a nervous smile. Soon after, the ravenette stepped off with a silent shake of her flowing mane, until a playful yapping sounded just next to the half-malak and gifted more than what was figured.

"I can attest! You are definitely quite the strange one~," Magilou sang with joy at terrorising the man before zipping off and out of distance, Sarid almost failing to relent at the urge of swiping her pompous headwear.

However, as the band of misfits aimed to take the direct front gate perpendicular to the harbour, a cross of spears barred their way, a pair of soldiers reprimanding the pathway as off-limits, along with any pathways off north. "If you are here for the ceremony, you'll want to take the Danann Highway south to Loegres."

Continuing down the branching banks of the stone docks, they split off and under a great arch up above, sighting a parting roadway that held more important wears and locations. At the left, residing under a curving and striped stall tent, was a special merchant with various items of weaponry displayed upon tables and resting within a large carrier sack withdrawn at their back. Whereas, on the left, stood a fairly popular Inn that would be handy for any rest times at their return to port. And finally, at the direct front, was a large while also approachable gate freely accessed by the sea-like flow of merchants at its path.

With a resounding yet expected inhale of excitement, the always ready samurai scampered off in a fair beeline for the weapon merchant, missing the grasp of a particular half-malak's tunic that stepped off and away from the Yaksha's chaotic path. In only minutes, Rokurou returned with a grin festering with bloodthirsty urges as he patted a fairly obvious set of new hilts upon his sash. Sighing at the rambunctious antics of the war daemon, Velvet lead the rest of the following crew towards the southern gate leading to Loegres. Although, as they approached without trouble an order of soldiers dashed out from the vintage wooden gate, out of breath with the scent of fear leaking from his gleaming armour. Eyeing the commotion with interest, the listening Therion looked on closely while the soldier halted before a seemingly stern soldier of identical attire.

The concern-stricken soldier saluted rigidly, the words coming from his echoing bucket of a helm worried yet bolstered by his newfound safety. "Sir! Scouts have reported seeing a powerful daemon! It's danger level has been classified as code red!"

"Understood. I'll notify the Abbey we have a code red daemon in our midst. Send out an emergency alert to the neighbouring areas."

"Right!"

Humming in thought, Velvet looked on dismissively about the potential dangers, only interested in the aforementioned emergency and causes that such a mean presence would create to their advantage. "With wild daemons this close to the capital, the Abbey must have had its hands full," she figured with a flex of her wrist. Less things in her way along the road ahead.

Nonetheless, a samurai at their backs as quite invested in this unheard topic brought up by the soldiers flying into action upon its appearance. "Eizen, what did he mean by a code red daemon?" Rokurou questioned, intrigued at the significance of this creature.

Searching through his seemingly limitless mind of information about the world they set foot on, the pirate concisely cut down the info to convey to the knowing cast, "It's like a most wanted list for daemons. From the latest I've heard, there could be around ten daemons across the territories."

Expectedly, the warrior daemon's eyes lit up hungrily upon hearing about their infamy; gripping his chin with interest. "Oooh, they sound pretty tough."

"That would be putting it lightly. Suffice it to say, you wouldn't want to face one unprepared."

"Then we best be prepared."

Interrupting the samurai's itching fingers to draw steel upon a powerful foe, a pat of a bandaged palm rested over his shoulder. "Cool it, can we just deal with one problem at a time? I'd rather not die from a 'sword-measuring' contest..." Sarid motioned warily in exasperation, setting violet eyes upon the gate before them. And before it, was the daemoness that waited their advance, rapping fingers on her bicep in that familiar gesture of impatience.

"As he said, let's get going. While we're wasting time here, the Abbey is digging their heels in."

~~~

The ever far-reaching and beautiful stretch of land snaked along and through small, winding hillsides and natural gardens of vibrant flowers, dotted trees a few and the grand, overbearing silhouette of the Empire's Jewel only growing in size, was what made up the vital trails of Danann Highway. And with the plumes of kicked up dust breezing along at the feet of a travelling group, one clear question rang the cleanly air of calling wildlife.

"Why did you come back to us?" the Samurai questioned with a deadpan expression, somehow a headache already building upon the crew akin to a hefty cloud of smog; all burdened by what was the simple presence of Magilou - the petty and pompous.

"I'm surprised you could deal with her while I was gone... Why wasn't she the shark-bait?" Not only did the Yaksha have the painful wrench of enjoyment pulled from his soul, but so did the fairly recent newcomer, where the half-malak figured he would remain unbendable and steadfast. Now Velvet could quite clearly see that the sparkling, poison raspberry was giving Sarid second thoughts from the Witch's satirical singing and monologuing that only grew in continuation. Even Eizen shuffled along silently, the hands that dove deep into pockets only sinking further with each painful stride influenced by the simple tone of the jester's song.

Twisting with a rabbit-like hop, Magilou winked childishly as she presented herself with a gleeful grin of self-absorbed brilliance. "I can tell you missed me something awful," she goaded with a twirl of her hair around a fingertip.

"We didn't," the irritable daemoness groaned at the forefront of the trudging crew, keeping her golden glare honed only on the emblazoned city in the distance; a counter measure to pull back the urge of silencing the Witch permanently. "At all."

"And what about your search for this traitor?" Rokurou eventually questioned, bringing the Witch's nuisances of a past time to a slow.

"He slipped away yet again. I've no clue where he ran off to," she explained, remaining bubbly despite her almost dismissively sad tone.

Turning from their steady amble, Velvet grumbled back at the Witch mockingly, "You're a witch, aren't you?" the daemon stated matter-of-factly, "Can't you cast a spell or something?"

"My spellcraft works kind of like a three-legged race. It simply requires my backstabbing, slippery accomplice," Magilou crudely explained, tacking on a particular insult, as is her way.

Rokurou grinned at her terminology, facing her with a smug smirk hat already spoke of a joke barreling her way, "Like a con artist needs an accomplice," the warrior daemon snidely berated.

"I am NOT a con artist!"

"You seem pretty useless without one..." came the low-blow from the joy-sapped half-breed at the path side.

"SHUT IT."

Through the drastic whining of the mocked Witch that took her sweet time traversing the rocky highway, Velvet stared on with a weirded out raise of her brow; empty of benign for the squabbling mess of colour. "I'm not going to help you find your traitor, you know," she bluntly admitted - a fairly obvious remark with a lack of tact.

"How cold! Such an icy stare could freeze fire!" Magilou moped dramatically, hanging low in pure defeat.

The Samurai suddenly hummed in thought, itching his chin as he looked past the gaudy jester, "And, you don't have anyone else?"

"Hmm... Well, no," she revealed, springing up with that same lucky expression of bubbly joy.

Rokurou blinked in surprise, "Do you have a home to return to?"

"Nope!"

"Do you know a trade other than magic?" His face dropped again to disbelieving irritation.

"Nope!

The voice again - dry from the sidelines. "...Is your magic helpful in any way?"

"No- Hey!"

Abruptly, Velvet saw the young malak flinch for a moment, a small and unexpected gasp slipping from his mouth as Laphicet watched in silence at the stamping Witch that sent a flustered ramble of unidentified words over to the laughing half-breed. "What is it, Laphicet?" the Reaper questioned, confused at the obvious switch in demeanour.

The boy glanced down shyly, finding difficulty in identifying what emotions he was racked with from her story. "Um... Magilou's story made my chest feel funny... And my nose is runny," he apprehensively explained, bewildered at the occurence.

Splaying his hands out openly, Eizen decided to explain the complex feeling Laphicet had been surprised with, "The Witch has no friends, no home, and no purpose. I think what you're feeling is pity."

"Pity?"

"It's when you feel sorrow for someone else," the older malak described, helping the young boy decipher its meaning.

Laphicet tilted his head, confused as he tested the words stuck in his throat. "I... pity Magilou..."

"Oh, come on!"

Far ahead of the crest that arose atop the hilled pathway, was an extravagant meadow; swept with flowers a plenty, each vivid and rich from the plentiful environment yielded to their settlement. However, in and throughout the very organic threads that wove together this radiant field, a battle waged. And through a thorned bush, crashed a roaring orange gibbon; daemonic energy leaking out in droves as it screamed in unbridled rage and hunger, throwing fist after fist at a darting black figure dancing underneath its stomping feet.

Velvet's expression was impassive, wrath lead dormant between the veil of flesh and concentration, before weaving past another mindless crash of blighted limbs. Soaring above its vacant head, the wrist-blade slipped from her steel gauntlet and hammered down into clenched teeth; splitting the rotten calcium and using the moment of contact to somersault behind its unguarded backside. With a huff of momentary anger to build her veins, the daemoness whirled around, sending a spinning kick from bladed metal to crack its gorged posterior.

A stumble and another cry of dribbling rage - crimson mingling with its animalistic sweat - and it sent a barreling swing with its trunk-like forearm to bat away the agile fighter, as she only snarled with a dismissive roll of hazel pearls, even as the shrill cry of winds were sending black tendrils bristling. Dashing forth, the ravenette fell to her knees in a slide, letting the momentum carry true as she lent back; the wild attack spinning unsuccessful as it passed above. Slamming an open palm to the desecrated dirt, Velvet pushed and fired off above again - glaring eyes level with the growling gibbon - and her bandaged arm bubbled with a sickly vermillion.

"Devour!"

Squelch...

"Come on, really?"

The pulpisating, seeping flesh oozed its vile innards across the once spotless flowerbeds - innocent white petals forever lashed with contrasting scarlet - but she paid no mind, the pulsing insides of the feasting claw impaled upon each select carcass brought to their knees on the highway path. Dark, coalescing essence eventually dissipated within the limb she so carelessly revealed; and the mild wounds ever attained closed back up with the relinquished energy.

Even as the brutalised body sank away into the ruined, immoral meat of a lifeless and once-corrupted human, she paid no mind.

Velvet scoured out upon the winding path, catching a divergence in their route at the end of the meadow: one slinked to the left, heading east and away from the grand walls of the city soon to fill her vision just ahead, while the other remained south bound towards the Jewel of the Empire.

Only one beast remained standing in their way, and she expected the ever so infamous Reaper could dispatch it with ease.

Eizen's resilient fists - barred with only the trusted strength of his own body - bashed away at the chest of the heaving gibbon, fracturing every unnatural bone blistering inside its soon-to-be broken and discarded body. Eventually, a pitiful attempt was made for the daemon to stumble back and sling a clawed right.

Crack, crack!

Two hits, arm and knee. Right cross, crumbling left to the lower body. The beast tumbled with a withering exhale, the erupted joints of what held together its beaten form, splintered and shattered by the pirate's unmatched strikes. A final blow, one to reduce its jaw to that of mush. Bending one knee, Eizen grit his teeth as he swung the fist back, low and slow; even the very earth his boots crackled upon began to tremble with the mixing of his malakhim energy. With a thundering yell, the Reaper catapulted his rocketing knuckles right into the stunned gibbon daemon. In a single strike, its very framework that had meshed its skull, was rendered into a splattered mess along the cobbled road.

"That's all, huh?" he grunted with a shake of his soaked fist, cleaning it fresh with a flourish of his fingers upon empty air, and through it came a thick veil of water that assisted in washing away the vile stains of his work.

As the deathly stale scent of death filled the air - mingling with the rushing gales of autumn winds still seasons past - the daemonblight ripped through the peaceful life pumping along scarred earth, tendrils of swirling blackness tracing its tincture upon the fresh air; all swallowed and reimbursed to power the deep drinking vestments of Velvet's strength. Almost as if the appendage was absorbing the very inklings of blighted molecules residing within torn daemonic flesh without being the one to tear it free. A conduit for corruption itself. Nevertheless, the vengeful daemon paid it no mind - just another tool in her journey of chaos - and cast her sight among the split group, weapons once deep inside the storm of battle.

A flicker of that aureate lightning across carved fields, a swaying of sunset robes in the day-lit breeze, a click of clenched and calloused fists, a flap of levitating parchment arcing with mystical artes, and finally, the smothering cloak of shredded darkness upon a siren of beauty; flailing in the torrent of amaranth sin. And in no time at all, they had manoeuvred back onto the beaten path of the renowned city, at the lead of a seemingly heartless monster, one that only stared forward over endless paths for just a lone, single reason.

~~~

With young yet blinding rays threading the few great trees spotted among the hillsides, a relaxing trickle of running water flowed close by; the arch of a bending stone bridge - ornate as with everything decored by the Abbey - leading the trekking crew over the serene current of the minute river below. In the ever broad horizon always aligned with golden irises, finally was the grand structure the group was long anticipating. Towering buildings, almost scraping the sky itself, stood unmoving against nature's force; their sense being of nobility and serenity among valour and protection for the residents below. This great and thriving core city, stood enshrouded by nigh unscalable walls of pure, smooth stone - consistently draped with the Abbey's azures, golds and whites.

Down below, a similar gate to the one built upon Port Zekson resided, barely a fraction of the formidable wall that was wound around the citizens deemed worthy by the 'reasonable' Abbey. And deep within these hundreds of thick rocky walls, was a target Velvet swore upon the past and the future, would taste her steel before she ever falters again.

"Wow... Those walls... They're so huge," the young malak observed with widened lime orbs, and a bright, wide smile of joy.

Eizen stepped forth with an analytical stare, narrowed eyes upon the few figures of activity shifting among the fair oak gateway, "That's Loegres, the capital of the empire. They keep daemons out by enclosing the city within a great wall."

"Humanity has achieved great things on the backs of slave malakhim," Magilou snidely remarked with a signature impish grin of hers. The two pure malakhim glanced back at her with equally uncomfortable stares, while the half-breed looked on distantly, mind vacant of present thought.

"Why the surprise Laphicet?" Rokurou questioned with a strange risen brow of confusion, "You've been here before, right?"

"I have. But back then... I was not who I am now..." the blonde boy chuckled sadly, looking down at his once naive exorcist garments, the emblem plucked from its innocent white and teal.

"I see. Tethered malakhim aren't even allowed the freedom to observe their surroundings," the Samurai realised lowly, frowning at the shameful image in his head.

With a fiendish chuckle accented by her comedic smirk, the Witch gave a sly glance to the group as she forebodingly laid out the reality of what they were stepping into; "We'll soon lose such freedom ourselves."

"Huh?" came Laphicet's murmur of obvious confusion.

"We've reached the heart of the empire, and of the Abbey. Soldiers and Exorcists are stationed all around. This is no place for a collection of villains like us," Magilou explained with a pitiful shrug, as if she had given up before setting foot inside.

"Then, how about we at least try to get stuff done before getting caught?" Sarid added dryly, glowering in exasperation.

"I'm not looking for a place, or getting out safely either." The clicks of the daemoness' steel boots upon the patted dirt path rapped, as she sauntered past without hesitation; dead straight for the fortified gate of the Abbey's home.

"All I need... is to find Artorias."