Journey to Aztlan

The next morning, we get an early breakfast, break up camp and prepare to head out. Before we start though, I ask Kiara if she would like to take the next step in her battling of anxiety by taking down her hood in the company of friends. She is willing to give it a try, and everyone is pretty cool about it.

While traveling with Kiara’s face exposed like this, I find myself regularly checking on her. To see how she’s doing. Her behavior is so very different from usual. Normally, she has this confident strut about her. This time, she walks submissively. Always finding someone to follow and never taking the lead. Amelia notices it to and walks up to Kiara to hold her hand. In a way, it makes Amelia resemble an older sister taking care of her little sister.

After a couple of hours, we come across a homestead. Livia suggests to head over there, since she watched a person walk around while she was flying overhead. Kiara gets her hood back on and we head over there, but when we show up there is nobody present. Livia walks to the front door and knocks a few times. Then she steps back and spreads her wings wide. The door opens and a man walks out. A demon without horns, but seemingly showing reverence to Livia, even though he doesn’t know her.

“Greetings, milady.” The man says. “Pardon for not welcoming you sooner. There has just never been a person like yourself come through these parts before.”

“It is quite alright, sir.” Livia replies with a warm smile. “My friends and I are here killing monsters in search of a challenge. We killed a manticore just yesterday and we were wondering if you were interested in buying some of its meat.”

The man’s face shows surprise. “T-the manticore is dead?” He asks. “That creature has at times taken some of our sheep and damaged our crops. Thank you for clearing out the monster. But, I’m afraid we are but poor farmers. We do not have any money to offer you.”

“The manticore offered more than just meat.” Livia continues. “We also have its venom sack that alchemists would be interested in buying. Inform us about the location of the closest village or town and I shall consider it payment for the meat.”

Just like that, the man tells us everything we need to know about the area. Where we can find the closest towns and villages, which of them have alchemists and which don’t. From the open door of his house, I notice a wife and son staring curiously at us. It makes me feel like this is very similar to how a human family would react if some adventurers are passing along. In a way, this makes the demons not so different from us. It really makes me wonder about all the stories I’ve read about demons before. I doub those stories are all lies. There must be some truth behind them. But perchance they didn’t tell the whole story.

The next couple of days, we do come across the villages we were told about. We manage to sell the manticore fur and its venom sac and earn some money which we quickly spent on renting some rooms in a local inn. We also ask around for a few more quests and collect a bit more money this way and get to know this province some more. The whole area here is Mictlan and … well, nature here is not quite like it is back home. The vegetation is a lot more sparse, the trees don’t look so healthy and the farms seem to not produce as much food as the ones back home do. But at least they produce something. It feels like the people here are stuck on some form of subsistence farming. To only be able to produce the food they need to survive and no more, which makes me think of all the troubles this would bring if only 1 harvest goes bad.

And wherever we go, without fail, people always show more respect to Livia and Lilith then they do to the rest of us. Absolutely always. They are also the only two of us with wings. My suspicion that in this place wings are a sign status. One time, Kiara used her [Glamor] to give herself a pair of demon wings and like predicted, she was suddenly treated with the same level of reverence. That confirms it to us. Winged demons are simply demons that have a special status and we too better show respect for them when they show up. If we don’t we would make ourselves appear suspicious.

By the time we reach Mictlan’s capital, Aztlan, we have already collected a decent amount of coins. Enough to make due in this strange land. The city is big. Not as big as Riledo, but there definitely are a lot of people. The reason Livia wants to travel here, is because a city like this is a good place for information. Which is what we are going to need if we are going to figure out where Zaine is hidden. We quickly discover that the Duke in charge of this city, and also the province of Mictlan, is a guy named Vanth, the monster layer.

“Don’t they mean to say, ‘monster slayer’?” I ask Livia.

Livia shakes her head and says, “You’ll understand it better when you see it.”

She takes the lot of us to the Aztlan zoo. Normally that’s where they have animals in different enclosures, right? Except, it’s a zoo designed by a demon known as the ‘monster layer’, so a monster zoo?

The first enclosure we come across is one that holds some black wolves. Except, the creatures in there did not look like wolves. They instead resembled nude women with wolf ears and tails. Almost like they are wolf type beastkind.

Leona seems to notice the same. She walks over to Livia and with a scowl in her eyes she asks, “What is this supposed to mean?”

“Those beings were originally black wolves. Like, actual real wolves.” Livia says as she waves her hand at the creatures in the black wolf enclosure. “Then Duke Vanth tamed them, and brought them to his flesh grafters.”

“Flesh grafters?” Leona asks.

“Adventurers that can use mutation magic.” Livia explains. “Your friend, Helena, would be considered a flash grafter here. And while in your country, flesh grafting is strictly limited, for us it is common practice. I myself had a flesh grafter turn my skin this lovely shade of red.”

“Alright, but what about those wolves?” Leona asks. “Did your flesh grafters really mutate those wolves into some kind of wolf girls?”

“Exactly.” Livia says. “They may look like women with some wolf features, but their minds are still those of wolves. Look closely and study how they walk, how they behave, how they interact with each other.”

I look at the wolf girls again like Livia suggests. I do notice some oddities. They don’t walk u with good posture like normal people do. Rather, they walk around a little hunched over. When they want to sit on the ground, they have a tendency to put their hands on the ground, like comfortable being on all fours. Then there is one who smells another girl’s butt, with the other girl getting upset and growling at her. And finally, one of the wolf girls decides to start chasing her own tail and ends up running circles around herself.

“They are not girls.” Leona whispers once realization hits. “They are dogs in girl bodies.”

Livia gets close to Leona and asks, “Do you want to know the worst part?”

Leona looks at Livia, worried about what she might say but still asks, “What?”

“The reason Vanth had these wolves transformed into this … is so he could have sex with them.” Livia tells.

“Wait!” Amelia says in shock. “You’re saying Duke Vanth wanted to have sex with wolves?”

Livia ignores Amelia and announces, “Let’s move over to the next enclosure.”

When we get there, we see a couple of creatures that have the lower body of a snake and the upper body of a human. The plaque at their enclosure announces that they are lamia.

“There creatures were originally giant snakes.” Livia explains. “Then Vanth tamed them, sent them to his flesh grafters and voila. The giant snakes now have both tits and a vagina.”

“Oh my god.” Amelia says as she quickly looks away.

I can’t help but watch at these poor creatures. Like the wolf girls, these Lamia are snakes, with the intelligence of snakes and behavior of snakes, but are now trapped in bodies that are half human. All so one weirdo could satisfy his lust. This … this is unreal.

From behind us we suddenly hear a voice saying, “And if you boys were curious what it feels like to be with a snake girl …” We turn around and see strange demoness walk up to our group. “You can totally go to the local brothel where you can pay to fuck one of them.” She then looks over at Livia and winks as her. “Hi, Liv. How have you been?”

The strange demoness has straight black hair and obviously had some flesh grafting done on her tongue, for it is has a thin elongated tip like that of a snake. But most importantly, she is one of those demons that has wings, so we will have to make certain to show respect to her.

Livia sighs audibly and rolls her eyes the second she sees the new person. “Hello, Nami.”

Nami smiles and gets closer to Livia. “Aww, what’s wrong, Liv. Don’t you like seeing me?”

Livia turns her head away from Nami, like a pouting child and replies, “Not since last time we met.”

“Oh, come now. You have to admit you were a bit foolish, right?” Nami says, getting closer to Livia. “I mean, a B-rank, trying to get into an S-rank’s party? On top of which, one of your skills is a magic the S-rank can already do? That makes you kinda useless in the squad, don’t you think so?” Nami says, directing the last question to us.

“Uhm, Livia? Who is this person?” I ask.

Nami looks at me and asks, “What’s that? Livia never told you about me?” Then she turns back to Livia and says, “Yeah, figures. I wouldn’t want to talk about my failures either.”

Livia sighs again and explains, “Once upon a time, there was an S-rank that had an opening in her squad. I was hopeful and tried to get recruited, but I was rejected.”

“And then, poor Livia was so upset she threw a tantrum.” Nami continues. Nami points with her finger at an imagined person and says, “Well, what if I come back from the human kingdom with a Zrephian artifact, huh? Then you’ll all choke on your laughter. Mark my words.” Nami gets back to her normal posture and gives Livia another insulting smile. “And we’ve never seen her again.”

“So, what happened, Livia?” Nami asks. “What did you do? Did you actually go to the human kingdom? Or did you get cold feet or something?”

Livia scowls at Nami, upset but also calculating. “I went back to my home village.” Livia says. “I was upset and my partner comforted me. I ended up pregnant as a result. It would have been irresponsible to go.”

Nami as a result starts laughing at Livia. “You went and got yourself knocked up? Oh yeah, that sure showed us.”

“I could still do it, you know.” Livia spits at Nami. “I just gotta set these kids up and then I’ll be off. Just watch me. I’ll get something off those stupid humans.”

Right, at this point it is obvious Nami and Livia have a past. I just hope it’s not going to interfere with our mission.

“So, what are you even doing with these kids, Liv.” Nami asks. “It’s not like you to be some kind of babysitter.”

“Well, if you must know, these are some kids from the village I was raising my daughter in.” Livia says. “It’s a very remote village, very self-sufficient too, up in the mountains. That means it’s pretty isolated so practically no news about the state of the country goes up there. But these kids are adults now and want to discover their place in the bigger world. I just got to figure out what happened the last 20 years, that’s all.”

“Oh.” Nami replies. “Well, if that’s all that’s going on with you, I’ve been keeping up to date with everything while you were playing house. Why don’t you let me tell you?”

Actually, that’s a great suggestion. We’ve been searching for information and now a person from Livia’s history just offers it.

“Save it.” Livia says dismissively. “We’ll find someone else.”

I quickly run up to Livia and try to change her mind. “Hang on. If we are to find a good job here, we’ll have to know what’s been going on.” I say, trying my best to play the part of young hopeful adventurer. “The least we can do is listen.”

Livia grabs me by the arm and pulls me closer to her. Then she whispers, “Nami used to bully me. If I agree right away she’ll know something is up. So, keep challenging me on this.”

I see, this must be one of those subtle social things that happen in demon society. I pull back from Livia and tell her, “I don’t care about all that. We need information, and Nami is offering. Come on, guys.”

I get my friends to move over to Nami’s side after which Livia fakes reluctantly joining us against her wishes.

Nami takes us all the way to some inn where she is renting a room. There she asks us what kind of information we want.

“So, what do you kids already know about our country?” Nami asks.

“Well, Livia has told us about the different provinces.” I explain. “She also said something about there being a king and several dukes, but she didn’t go into any of that.”

Nami looks over at Livia and says, “Please tell me you’ve at least told them about the civil war.”

“I’ve … heard about there having been a war … after we started our journey.” Livia says as she looks away from Nami.

“Oh boy.” Nami replies. “Well, I guess I better start with that.”