Doren woke without knowing exactly why. He'd been dreaming of his days as an acolyte, bitter memories of the terror and sweat of the training grounds and the intoxicating feeling of acceptance and success. He made no rush to get up. He was loathe to trade the pain and pride of his nostalgic dream for the shame and apathy of today. So, in full violation of everything he had ever learned, he didn't move straight into wakefulness. He didn't scan the area with his senses or open his Sight to search for unearthly threats. Instead, he lay there, complacent, hiding in the fading emotions of his dream, the bittersweet taste of it so much better than reality. It had been longer than the hour he had allotted himself, but what did it really matter? The insanity of his deal with Valla could wait. If she was going to leave, she would already have left, and if she wanted to find him, he doubted he could shake her off even if he wanted to. He could make his promise once the sun had fully risen. Or in the evening. Or tomorrow. Two years was a long time for a contract, and starting a day later would hardly matter.

As he clung to sleep, a scarlet wave of power rippled through the inn. Doren's eyes flew open. It had been relatively weak, a pebble thrown into a lake, but it was the same tone as Valla's had been before. His senses opened wide, and he heard clamoring, shouting, and the sounds of metal on metal. Thoughts racing, he threw himself out of the cot, belting on his set of daggers and grabbing his scabbard before leaping half-dressed out the second-story window. Why would Valla attack someone now? Had something in the village provoked her before she could follow through with her bizarre trick with him? He landed easily in the small alley on the side of the inn, thoughts racing uselessly as he ran into the main road. A hundred yards or so away a circle of people were shouting desperately, clumsily hacking at a blur of blue and copper. Doren closed the distance quickly, struggling to understand what he saw. He recognized Aisel and Orlo and some other faces he'd seen in the tavern but had no names for, all of them except one wielding some sort of rough weapon or other – was that a pitchfork? – the unarmed fellow stumbling away from the throng with a look of abject confusion. Valla wielded a sword expertly, weaving herself through the blows of the clearly inexperienced warriors, somehow managing to disarm a hulking man with a club and Orlo's pitchfork in the seconds it took Doren to close the distance. He smelled blood as he approached but saw no bodies.

"What in Tor's rotten teeth is going on?" He spoke loudly without shouting, keeping his voice clear and imbuing it with as much authority as he could manage while standing barefoot and shirtless on a dirt road. The unarmed man ran toward him like a lost child to a parent, positioning himself well behind Doren. The others stuttered to a halt, less at his words and more because Valla used their distraction to disarm another two before lurching out of the circle in a jerky half-roll. The energy of the fight ebbed, and everyone rocked back from where they stood, the townsfolk hurriedly grabbing up weapons as they stumbled back and away from Valla and closer to Doren. Valla moved back too and stood swaying fifty paces from the townsfolk. She was bleeding, badly enough to soak her clothes, blood dripping slowly down her arm and off her tunic onto the dirt. Doren scanned the villagers and saw injuries there as well - scrapes and torn clothes, one woman cradling her arm at an awkward angle - but nothing mortal. No indication of any strange wounds, no burns or oddly colored bruises, no bites or claw marks. He struggled to understand what exactly was happening. This was not a rampage of an enraged beast or even a game of a bored daemon or elemental. This looked like a simple mob attacking a lone warrior in the middle of a town's main road.

"Sir, help us; the daemon will not leave now we have discovered what it is," Orlo gasped, eyes bright with frustration and terror, chest heaving with exhaustion. "It tricked us for so long, and we cannot defeat it without help. Please," she was almost sobbing now.

The giant stepped heavily toward Doren, gesturing at the others to gather themselves together. "It is toying with us. We can't let down our guard."

None of them knew what he was, then. Despite the chaos before him, Doren felt a flash of relief. There would be no cries for him to make a Promise or looks of horror when he admitted his shameful exile. He was simply a competent fighter in their eyes, an outside authority.

"You must know what it is, sir, after speaking with it. After it threatened you," Orlo was pleading still. "It is a snake! It will burn us all!"

"A snake?" he asked, somewhat incredulously. He had wracked his brain for hours struggling to decide what Valla might be, but a flaming snake daemon was not on his list. He was not so arrogant as to think he knew of every type of being that existed, but he found himself doubting that the powerful trickster musician who had been toying with him with nothing more sinister than wordplay was simply a snake daemon, fire or not. Although sentient, daemons were not known for impulse control once they were in the Earth Realm - it was intoxicating but deeply harmful for them to be away from their true home, and it became agony to exist here too long. He had not heard of any daemon parading in the guise of a humanoid, or even of one managing to feign calm for more than a few minutes. But this was not something the townsfolk could be expected to know, as irrational as their conclusion was. It was shocking to see the damage they had managed to inflict on Valla, considering the power and control she had exhibited before, and he suspected from the relative health of each of her opponents and what little of the fight he had seen that she had focused on protecting them from each other more than she had on incapacitating them. Even so, this was no explanation for her near defeat. If she had even a fraction of the strength he had assumed, they should all be dead, and she should be standing there without a scratch. Even if her preferred method of combat was conversation and manipulation, it seemed she hadn't put much effort into that either. She had been strangely quiet as the villagers had entreated Doren, and he turned, focusing on what he really should have considered the biggest threat from the beginning. Her head was hanging slightly, eyes glassy, but she raised her gaze to his as soon as he looked at her.

"For what its worth," she rasped, sardonic, "they started it."

And in what might be the oddest of all the odd things that had happened in the last day, he believed her.