I found a slightly larger town that did have a magical one within it, large enough to have some more short-range teleportation things. As I walked around though, I could always feel the ceaseless whispers and endless staring as I walked about; the massive horns, the hoofs, tail and of course my skin-tone being a vivid primary color makes me stand out a lot.

              Most places are rather blasé about those with demonic lineage, but in smaller places like this there are always those who still feel like people who are demonic in nature have some sort of ulterior motive to their lives. My father was someone like that. I am what is called a hellkin, or tiefling to some due to the influx of popularity of DnD and the very, very similar manner of existing between my people and the game’s race. Others call us demon-kin, hell-blood or various other names, the one always used on legal papers is hellkin though. I can’t hide what I am like my mother did, she was lucky to have been born with a humanoid skin tone and feet instead of hoofs, me on the other hand; I got a very unnatural skin-tone and goat hoofs in place of feet. I can’t keep up with maintaining my horns like those with horns in towns or cities do, most people who have horns like to style and keep them close, blunt and out of the way, but I don’t have the ability to do so, so my own horns have grown out excessively and are razor sharp as that is how they grow, kind of like how they look though, I feel cool having these giant horns of mine.

              My father didn’t know what my mother was, she hid her nature of a hellkin secret for as long as possible, the only reason it came to light being I was born, my father was…well, furious doesn’t come close to how angry he was not only because Mom lied about what she was, but for “tainting his bloodline”, but where we lived was such a small and close knit community that the idea of getting a divorce was more upsetting than the idea of staying together, it did not stop him from making my life for lack of better phrase, living hell. He was the kind of person who believes that there is no reason someone of demonic origin would be on the mortal plane if not to try to kill and slaughter people or try to take over an area, the guy even believes the warlords have ulterior motives. He refused to believe that they were good people, that everything they did and have done was purely to make people invested in them so that one day the warlords could pull the rug out of from under them and make themselves the top dogs of the world to the extent where the three dozen of them control the entire world, both magical and not. He believes that while on the surface and to others they appear good and that they only want to help the world, that when alone or out of range of prying eyes, that they are horrible, horrible people. He calls people of demonic origin…he calls us monsters. In most magical areas, saying the word monster is…it’s a horrible, horrible slur because it takes away the fact that all of us are by default, people before anything else, that’s all we want, to be treated as people and calling us monsters makes us anything but.

              The staring and whispering made my skin itch a bit as I reached behind me to feel the thickly knotted scar that marred the back of my shoulder. All I could hear, even if people weren’t talking about me specifically or anything of that sort, all I could hear was the horrible things other have said about me: telling me to go back to the hells, pulling or hiding kids or babies away from me because of stereotype of demons eating children, various other things that made me feel like even in magical cities where I should feel comfortable and safe, I wasn’t anything close to safe. I wrapped my tail around me tightly as I lowered my head and hunched forward a little, using the hood of my jacket to cover as much of my horns as possible as I folded my arms and kept myself as hard to see as possible.

              Because I was walking with my head lowered, I couldn’t really see where I was going or anything of that sort, so I don’t really know where I ended up. I walked through the miniscule teleportation gate building as I just walked towards whatever one was the least popular. The world around me swirled and twisted before I stepped out into a different teleportation circle, the drastic shift in temperature told me that it was a fairly distant place I had just walked out into. I turned my head into my shoulder as the suddenly colder and more humid air made my lungs feel as if they had been suddenly filled with white hot needles making me cough rough enough I nearly had to stop walking as the spell passed me. I rubbed my sternum as I could feel that what I had thought was a cold was starting to feel like something a lot more deep in my lungs. I know some healing magic, but the magic there is to cure oneself or others of disease are not really something bards like myself know how to do, that’s a cleric and paladin spell usually.

              The magical city I walked out into wasn’t one I recognized just walking out into it, I’d saw Pacific north-west maybe by the way all of the buildings looked and the general temperature of the air, but you never know when it comes to things like magic, but I also wasn’t planning on staying for long, I just had to get out of the Midwest, I can’t risk being within a state-wide berth of Kansas. I couldn’t busk for anything with this cough, singing also wasn’t even more forte when I was studying music and my bardic magic, it was lyre. I know, it’s an odd instrument to choose, but there was always something I liked about how odd it was, how you never really hear or see anyone playing one commonly anymore, the sound if beautiful and it is what I enjoyed, but I don’t have one of my own to use to perform, so I’ve been making due with whatever other method of performing I could.

              I ended up just walking out of the city and walking off again, finding myself back in a cold, dark and misty forest, sky touching cedar, fir and pine trees for as far as I could see after maybe ten minutes of walking past the magic city’s edges. It was relatively early in the afternoon still based on how teleportation magic works, so I kept walking and walking. My lungs getting tighter, more constricted and heavier feeling as I kept walking. It was around dusk when I heard the owls hooting and other nocturnal wildlife starting to rise did I walk off the edge of the road and into the forest a bit. Finding a small enough clearing for me to put up the hut spell and start bedding down for the night, luckily the hut spell does make a form of a floor, but it was still for the most part bare sod and tree roots, so it took some shifting of my various things to make a proper bed base before I unrolled my sleeping bag and crawled in, the spell keeping the air a bit warmer than it was outside, but not enough to help stave off whatever I was coming down with.

              Sleep was not something that came to me easily that night, every breath made me feel like my chest was filled with broken glass and gravel, as each hour passed my breath started lessening and shallowing as my skin started to prickle with sweat despite the fact I was shivering which was more than enough to tell me that I was starting to get a fever, because of the demonic blood I am a bit more hardy against diseases and poisons, but for me to be able to feel a fever meant that it was actually quite bad sense we are also to a degree fire-resistant. Every turn or toss made me start coughing rough enough I was shocked I wasn’t hearing my ribs crunch, but it did make my stomach turn and my head feel like it had been put in a vice. I don’t know if I eventually fell asleep or passed out, one of those two.