Zaeli breathed in the icy chill of night, feeling it settle in her lungs delicately.

After ensuring everyone made it to Charlie’s tent okay, Zaeli took a break to the nearest spot of undisturbed nature, conveniently not too far from the circus itself. It was no lush forest, but it'll do.

Picking high terrain, she sat down on some gnarled roots, eyes closed and hands pressed into the soft, cool soil.
Tonight showcased a crescent moon, and the elf basked in its calming beams, smiling as she picked up on the scratches of small nocturnal critters scurrying about.

Zaeli used to be nocturnal too (kind of the default for moon elves), but following her village’s tragedy, she found it better to travel by day.
Can’t do much investigating without any people up and about after all.

Which was sort of a shame, considering her tendency to spend hours, even days on end keeping to herself in isolated woods and such.

It was just so relaxing, being able to fill her mind with nothing but the cartful wind, trickling brook, distant cicadas...

“..Ok,” Zaeli felt her drained brain slowly recover, before wandering curiously to her newfound companions.

For a while now, the vast majority of her social interactions consisted of quip denials in ever seeing the symbol Zaeli may as well burn into her eyes at this point, limited to quick “sorry no”s or brief “i don’t know”s, the like.

Today was the first time she had consistently stuck with a sizable group of people for long since… well. The village, honestly.

She’d gone through a handful of misadventures of course, following promising leads and aiding an occasional suffering community along the way, but any people involved typically remained as strangers.

After doing what she could, she simply left, never once losing sight of her goals.
Even after all this time.

“Zaeli?”

The elf had long since picked up on the crunching footsteps, slowly opening her eyes to greet the jester.

“Oop, didn’t mean to interrupt!" Rounding the tree behind her, Charlie gave a wave, "I saw you slip out earlier and wanted to see if you were alright.”

“Oh- no it’s fine, just.. taking a breather.” Zaeli leaned back against hardy trunk, “I’m alright, thank you. How are the others?”

Finding a clear patch of dirt, Charlie plopped down beside Zaeli, “Conked out, as expected. Nobody hurled though, so that’s good!”

They chuckled a little, before promptly falling quiet, giving way to distant cicadas.
Trickling brook.
Wind.

Zaeli couldn’t tell if Charlie felt any bit awkward from the silence–perpetually smiling mask and all–but she figured to say,

“I forgot to tell you but, thank you for following me earlier.” Zaeli didn’t realize her eyes strayed to the moon again until she looked away,
“You knew nothing about me, and yet you helped.”

“Naww it’s nothing,” A jolly shrug. “I’m just a fellow lover of shenanigans! ‘Sides, aren’t you doin the same?”

“Hm?”

“Yaknow, your whole ‘makin sure nothing wacky is going on in the whole wide capital’ thing!”

“Well- I.. suppose so??” That was certainly one way to phrase it. Even if Zaeli knew following through on a hunch based off nothing was fairly commonplace for her by now. Slowly, she frowned, “Although…”

“Uh-huh?”

Zaeli stayed quiet for a moment,
“..It, may be a frequent detour in my search, yes, but I often help others out of… obligation.” Not necessarily kindness out of kindness’ sake, as much as she’d like to believe it so.

Charlie nodded, bells lightly jingling.

When she didn’t go on, Charlie assumed,
“You weren’t there, were you?”

Zaeli looked up again to the moon, shaking her head.
No, she wasn’t. And as much as she knew better, guilt still ate her up for it.

“It was a human village.” Zaeli steadied her sigh, “They treated me like family.”
And in their one time of need, she was gone, coming back to nothing but scorched huts, trampled gardens, and fresh blood practically everywhere.

Smoothing away her shudder, “I was picking berries when it happened. For some celebration later.”

She couldn’t possibly remember what it was for; only that the berries got soiled in matching bright red after she dropped them.
“I was picking berries.”

“And you know it isn’t your fault.” Charlie affirmed.

“Of course I do. But that doesn’t really stop anything.” Doesn’t stop the guilt, the regret, the guardian urge to protect and help where she so miserably failed before.

Charlie looked down in both consolation and contemplation,
“..Hey, if you’re doing good, you’re doing good, right? The reason doesn’t matter.”

Half-heartedly, Zaeli mulled it over.

It can go without saying that before reaching the bustling capital, she’d only really trekked through other small villages or trade towns. The scale here was different–vastly so–but the procedure was the same.

Assess the new area, explore and gather information, scour the libraries, then move on. She’d been in the bulk of the second step for the past few days.

And today, after giving chase for a mistaken symbol, she’d found something entirely different yet sinister.
Heavy pockets clamoring for this unknown object with an unknown intent that made her gut feel heavy, the only question provoking her to delve further being; well, why on Dust wouldn’t she?

Zaeli relaxed into the grounding bark,
“I’ve learned a lot today, but there’s still one more loose end to tie up for this offshoot lead.”

Charlie scooched a hop closer, somewhat victorious, “Do tell?”

Reaching into her satchel, Zaeli retrieved the black key, brandishing its heavy metal,
“One of the nobles dropped this. It opens the chamber I snuck into today, where they met.”

An excited whisper, “More shenaniganry?”

Resecuring the key, Zaeli smiled in wordless affirmation,
“...Today actually reminds me of this other town I went through some moons ago.”

Head tilted, Charlie only gestured a hand to go on.

“It’s a bit of a long story.. are you not tired? It is rather late.” The stars were out in full, tempting Zaeli to linger.

“I meann.. we only need four-ish hours of sleep, right? Should be fine!”

Zaeli raised her brow. Another Eladrin?

She didn’t ask, instead fondly retailing what had been the most remarkable adventure in her search thus far (before today that is), wherein she embarked on a wild goose chase over some agitated lizard nobility scrabbling over a sacred shell that ending up having less historical significance than a pebble; nothing beyond dignity and pride hanging in the balance.

-*-

Calico tiptoed along warm marble and velvet rugs, giggling under their breath.

It wasn’t often they could make their way past the guards to reach father’s one and only forbidden hallway in all the ring’s castles, so they were going to have to make the most of their limited time here.

By snooping around. Naturally.

The decorative corridor was extensive, primarily full of bedrooms and stray bathrooms, but it didn’t take too long to reach the office at the very end.

Quietly, they pressed an ear to the heavy door.
Upon hearing nothing, they tested the knob, delighted to find that it was actually unlocked (last time they got this far, they chipped every claw trying to pick the keyhole).

But- that also meant father was probably going to come back soon–so on they scuffled in, rummaging through every shelf and drawer and chest they possibly could.

If their luck in avoiding not only hundreds of guards, but the queries of hundreds (probably thousands at this point) of nameless siblings persisted, they should be able to find a way to actually leave hell in no time.

Ever since father’s rise to deity-hood, he ruled all nine circles with a fairly light fist, save for one rule:
No traveling to and fro the realm of hell.

After some big Blood War or whatever (history wasn’t their best class), hell’s frights and brawns lost to the increasingly magical overworld; what with their rising gods and champions taking advantage of the Weave far earlier than demonkind ever could.

The terms of peace were to end soul-eating, but goodness knows no fiend capable of it would’ve ever listened to that if they could help it.
Therefore, all means of commuting between realms were destroyed (which Calico totally calls bullshit on, cause why wouldn’t the devil save a way for himself?), sealing hell up resolutely.

As expected, there was a fair amount of initial resistance to this decree.
Souls, simply put, are the cumulative feelings and emotions of a person (yes, demons included funnily enough).

And with how indulgent and feeling most hellish beings were by nature, consuming emotions was a fantastic way to gain power.
Particularly if they were negative, hence the age old tradition of fucking around with overworlders before promptly stealing their souls.

Not that demons actually needed any food (souls or otherwise) to survive, but if one didn’t want to wither through the centuries and grow weak, souls were by far the most popular method to maintain strength–paramount in a place like hell.

Regardless; since abrupt soul depletion typically resulted in death as the victim could do nothing without wanting something, demonkind quickly adapted to soul-snacking upon isolation instead.
Partial consumption, while not as powerful, allowed for recovery and placated enough to prevent any severe culling in population.

So in the long run, the ban bode just fine for the vast majority of demonic denizens.

…However, for someone who only ever knew/wanted to feed off positive emotions like Calico?
Not quite.

Virtually every demon considered siphoning negative emotions the tastiest thing in hell, but for reasons unbeknownst to them, Calico’s palette vehemently disagreed.

They tried to find substitutes, but surprisingly, the likes of carnal joys or sadistic delights were just as sour as negativity was bitter.
Genuine content, glee, happiness was the only thing they could stomach. Which- according to most texts, was far more available in literally every other realm or plane but hell, go figure.

Speaking of texts,

“Finally.”
Calico found a promising packet of documents at long last, instantly skimming through the contents as fast as possible.

They glossed over some classified chapters pertaining to demon ailments and weaknesses, finding nothing out the ordinary save for one eye-catching section, surrounding a word in an unrecognizable script.

“Huh..” Calico assumed it had nothing to do with what they were looking for, but was nonetheless intrigued. There were even a few pictures showing figures similar to the Weave’s quartomic structure.. only, different. Somehow.

“Older than ancient… deadly… nulling properties??”
They concluded it was some kind of sacred magic that could consume something into nothing, or make parts of you ‘unfeeling’. Either way it checked out, because Astra forbid demons (especially the lust ring) ever stop feeling.

Suddenly, Calico tensed, instantly forgetting about their strange discovery upon hearing distant footsteps beyond the hall.
So thank every deity sans their father that the chapter right after, held the jackpot.

“Yes-!”
Commiting the portal diagram to memory, the very second they realized the transport device was located at the top of father’s tallest castle, they booked it, leaving everything back in its proper place more or less.

There may not be many known worlds out there in this plane (the overworld realm of Dust, abysmal Hell, Astral afterlife), but one thing’s for sure, Calico was getting out of this one.

And maybe the fact that their bearer was from the gluttonous third circle played some kind of role, but all in all, Calico was a simple demon.

A demon, who wanted some good fucking food.