Within moments we are flying above the oceans, her trailing behind me as a sort of safety net in case I fall. It is fairly dark out, so us flying so close together is far less of an issue than if it were day. Too bad it isn’t safe to fly over the human civilizations; we’d get there quicker.

As we are about to make landfall, I feel my phone vibrate; curious.

Immediately as we land and sheathe our wings, I take a look at my phone. Valdas sent me a few messages nearly a week ago; why is it that I am only getting them now? Once she puts on the rest of her clothes, Satcha stands in front of me. I look up from my phone.

Satcha is sporting a pair of short jeans and a long-sleeved, shoulder-cut shirt with stripes of black and magenta strewn across it. Hanging from her pointed ears are a set of bangles, and along her neck hangs a few golden necklaces. I smile at her, and she pouts at me, throwing the bag of clothes at me. “Get dressed so we can get moving.”

Donning my tee and shoes, we take a brisk jog to the gas station. Well, it could have been a jog, were Satcha not the competitive type. “We should race there!” she shouts, keeping at a decent running pace with me. I look down at my phone: the GPS seems to move at a jittery pace, even with our current speed.

“What do you have in mind?”

“First one to our destination gets to buy whatever they want on the loser’s shard!”

I smirk at her. “You do know that I’m the only one with human currency, right?”

“Oh.”

“And I’m the one with the way to our destination.”

Satcha gives me the most adorable angry pout, and I pat her on the head.

“Can we make this walk a bit more interesting, Kimmel?”

I look at her questionably, and she takes it as the cue to show me… whatever she has in mind. You would think that she was a cat, not a Daemon, when she immediately takes a sharp right into an alley, scales up the side of the building, and bounds up the emergency exit.

Satcha, you are one surprising little Succubus.

“Come on, Kimmel!” she calls from on top of the roof. “This seems like way more fun!”

All I can do at this point is humor her: after checking around me for signs of human activity, I bound up the building in a similar manner to her. She smiles and continues running across the rooftop, jumping from building to building. I follow suit, and notice that the GPS is less erratic with updates.

Highly convenient.

The two of us start leaping from building to building at full speed, and I start to shout directions whenever the GPS gives them to me. Buildings started to wane, but it did not stop Satcha’s pace: she simply jumped onto the ground floor and kept running on the pedestrian paths as though she was doing that to begin with.

Nothing is stopping this girl from beating me, it seems.

She doesn’t even care about pedestrians walking in and out of buildings-- she weaves around them with no care in the world, and I have to apologize for her. She crosses streets when the crosswalks are red, and weaves over and around ongoing traffic. It would be very accurate to say that this Daemon gets an adrenaline rush from danger.

Yet, I am enjoying this far too much as well.

The GPS has us going to the highway, which normally is barred from pedestrian traffic, but Satcha literally has been ignoring any and all signage since we started this marathon. We run along the highway median; since I know it is going to be smooth sailing from here, I catch up to the Succubus, hip-to-hip.

“Kimmel, you actually have legs to run with?” she jokes, her breathing starting to stagger. “I guess it’s time to kick it into high gear!”

Her steps become faster, and I speed up to compensate. It persists for a few minutes, but eventually we reach the extent of our running speed. We are slowly outrunning what very little cars are driving at the highway speeding limit.

Satcha laughs, bounding on the balls of her feet. When she looks about ready to leap into the sky, I hold her shoulder down. She looks over at me with a disappointed gaze.

“No flying on the interstate.”

She shrugs off my comment, and continues to try and keep a top speed pace. Her legs eventually start to strain, so she slows a bit, running just in front of me. Our run along the interstate persisted for around half an hour, before I told her to take the exit coming up.

Exit 37, the same exit I took when driving Val home that night.

Satcha immediately spots our destination and takes a high-stamina push to the finish. No human would have survived this much strenuous exercise without much as a break, and she is actually pushing even further than even the fastest land mammals at this point.

We stand in front of the gas station named Kim’s, side by side. We both take a breather-- rather, I take the breather, and Satcha does a little victory march around me. I wonder if a Fol Daemon like herself actually needs water to cool off. I definitely feel a bit parched.

“I win,” Satcha finally manages to say, “and fair is fair.”

“You’re the victor,” I huff, to sate her ego, and she finally takes her breather. As she surveys the area around us, I send a reply back to Valdas.

“Sorry. Got sick with bedrest for about a week. La Caldera, end-week?”

“So this is the place, huh,” Satcha pants, stretching out her arms and legs. “Kim’s, is a really inconspicuous name. If the owner is who you think they are, then you’ve got some mighty-fine detective skills going on.”

We both enter the gas station convenience store, and are greeted with a cold blast of air. It looks… like a typical gas station convenience store: display stands full with rows upon rows of snacks, cooler sections against the wall, and even a soda machine. What looks mundane to me absolutely dazzles Satcha, and she immediately splits from me. I try not to have her attract attention, seeing as she’s fairly new to sightseeing.

I look over to the gas station clerk: they are about my height, androgynous, tan, with lilac dreadlocks and… are those forehead piercings? “Welcome to Kim’s!” they say. “I am Cameron, may I assist you with anything today?”

“No thank you,” I say with a smile, “we are just browsing.” I look around and find Satcha in the chip section, right before she starts to open up bags. I run over to her and stop her hand, and she gives me a possessive squint.

“Menta!” she shouts to me in Daemonic, pulling my hand off of the bag.

“Satcha you can’t just open up these bags without paying for them first.”

“Well how am I supposed to know the flavor?” She shuffles around the bag in her hands. “I can’t understand the script, and the pictures are cryptic too. What is white eyeshadow?”

“That is sour cream, Satcha.” I shake my head. “You can’t read Common?”

“Ka’mi’n? What is that?”

So I brought with me a Daemon who can’t even communicate in the human’s tongue. That’s fantastic. “It is the script that humans read and write in,” I whisper, “There are different variants of spoken Common, but nearly all of them use the same written script.”

“Why don’t they just use the same script as us?” she seems to shout, because the clerk approaches us with a glimmer of intrigue in their amber eyes.

“Is anything the matter, ser?”

“Ah, no,” I deject, back in the human tongue. “My… friend’s daughter is new to the area, so she finds it hard to read the words on food packaging.”

“She seems awfully grown to not know how to read things as simple as food packaging.”

“Fast grower, slow learner,” I chuckle in a stilted manner. “They didn’t teach her the language in school, unfortunately.” I give Satcha a side glare: she has a little horde of chips in front of her, and when she senses my gaze she skitters away with the chips in her arms.

“Shy too, huh,” the clerk laughs. “It’s unusual that they didn’t at least teach her the universal language, though. Where are you guys from?”

“East coast.” I look back to the clerk, who is looking in Satcha’s direction. Probably because, at this point, she looks keen to shoplifting. Their gaze looks fierce, guarded… I have to get their attention back on me. “Your name… it was, Kam’rin, right?”

The clerk’s eyes land back on me in a squint. “Yes,” they say, walking towards the checkout counter. At this angle, I can see their right hand slip into a pocket. “Interesting accent you’ve got there. You come from the down-east?”

I check to see where Satcha is right now: she seems to be at the self-serve drink station, filling a large cup with as many drinks as she can click on. So long as she is preoccupied, it is fine. “Down-east has nothing but worms and grass,” I reply.

Nonsense, it would sound to anyone that spoke the language.

Nonsense, it all sounds to Satcha, who, thankfully, cannot understand the language at all, and has her focus on the soda fountain.

I can see the clerk lock the door next to them, and, in proper Toku Kaliben fashion, they stand upright, palms up with the knife in their right palm. I take a deep breath and stand on bended knees, palms up to show my lack of a weapon. I hear a slow tsk tsk before they lunge at me immediately, targeting my shoulder blade with a blade of their own.

All the blade catches is a few strands of hair and the rack behind me, as I immediately redirect their body movement and shift positions with them, my back now facing the counter. The immediate clink of blade on metal piques Satcha’s attention, and I take a moment to give her a telling gaze, a few ocular pulses: a sign to stay back.

Kam’rin does not allow that to go unpunished, and immediately tries to swing at me again, this time nicking my cheek-- an unclean dodge from me. I try to kick their legs from underneath them, but my bare arms only become targets as I try to keep my balance. Trying to knock the blade out of their hand will not work as well: if it is the kind of knife that I think it is, there is a grip specifically made to prevent disarmament.

If this is indeed a Daemon I am fighting right now, they are far more well versed in the martial art than I am; and if it isn’t, I’m going to need to find a different strategy to defeat them.

They lunge at me again, and I attempt to disorient them by leaping into the air and flipping behind them; they meet my shoe with the blade, using just enough force to cause me to slam into the rack of magazines behind me. Tsk tsk, they click, and again come straight for me.

A clean dodge, I slam my foot into their middle, pushing them-- and the racks around them-- back. With the very brief respite, I wipe off my cheek, streaking my arm in my own dark, Daemonic blood. Standing in proper form, I coax them to come at me again.

What happened next was not an attack of ‘friendly’ battle: instead, Kam’rin’s eyes glow a piercing gold, and they come right for my legs. It makes it easy to dodge, but they too often immediately recoil back into a slash on the face. “Vavak vela!” I hear them shout.

Blue blood.

Satcha looks ready to intervene when the clerk shouts those words out, and when they try to strike me with a final blow to the face, I catch the blade with my teeth. They lean into it, burning orange eyes staring with murderous intent into my cerulean blues. They bare their teeth as they try to push harder and harder into the blade, and I bear my teeth in kind.

It takes a single touch of my tongue to shatter the blade with crackling blue energy. At that moment, I couldn’t help but put a smug look on my face. Kam’rin’s face was a look of both surprise and frustration, and they withdrew. “What are you doing here, blue blood?” they sneer.

“I wanted to confirm that there were Daemon out in hiding still,” I reply, hands grasped together in proper Toku Kaliben form. When I give them a slow bow, Kam’rin’s body relaxes, and they do the same. With the tension fading away, Satcha comes in with a shimmer in her eyes.

“What was that?” she shouts, eating a bag of chips she definitely didn’t pay for.

Kam’rin snickers, and points their shattered blade’s hilt at me. “Your friend here isn’t familiar with the rite, is she?” they ask. They turn to Satcha: “Toku Kaliben is a martial art taught to my people and the Siren for two reasons: to protect ourselves from harm, and to identify one another in the human realm.”

I take the hilt from their hands and observe it: it is emblazoned with circles and lines, alchemical symbols our ancestors associated with the elements around us. I point the broken blade towards my sternum, and then forcibly press it against my chest. Both Satcha and Kam’rin look upon me with shock. The entire hilt of the blade glows the same amber as the clerk’s eyes, and when I unsheathe it from my chest, the blade is anew.

Satcha’s jaw drops to the floor. “Wait… what… how did,” she continuously stammers, breaking her trail of thought at the confusion of this ritual. Kam’rin’s laughter stops her fumbling.

“And here I thought you would not even have the means to rightfully fix the blade you damaged,” they smile. “I can now say that I have met a somewhat-respectable Lith.”

“I am not a Lith,” I correct, handing the knife back to them. “At least, not yet.”

They observe the blade with the sharpest gaze. “Well, you have done the Rite,” they say, pointing their freshly-forged blade at me, “so now you have my audience. You looked for a Daemon, and you’ve found a Cambion.” They chuckle, pocketing the knife. “It’s been a while since I’ve used this blade for that Rite. Core is a sturdy forging material, is it not?”

“That it is”, I say, prodding my body for any unclosed wounds. After making sure they are all sealed, I ask the Cambion in front of me, “are you familiar with the technologies of this land?”

When they nod, I take out my phone to show them. “This device does not work when you leave the bounds of this landmass. I feel as though we can mend the Cambion Bridge with this, if we can figure out how it transmits signals from one device to another.”

“A Kin’ra after my own heart, knowledgeable about the Cambion Bridge.” They walk around the other side of the cash-out counter. “Aye, I do know someone who is fond of reverse-engineering that might be able to figure it out for you. If you can get me one of these for myself, I can hand it off and give you the information you wish to know in, say, a few weeks? Depends on the weather: I have a feeling it has to do with the planet’s elemental affinities.

“Messing with the World’s Essences during inclimate weather is a recipe for disaster,” they say, before tossing me a rag with a smug look. “If you aren’t a perfect example of it.”