“You broke a saint’s seal?"

Arielle looked up, eyes squinting as the summer sun assaulted her vision. Before her eyes a sturdy dwarf held her at sword point. It was older female dwarf, of stout stature like all dwarves, with two braids of a garnet-colored hair that came down past her knees. Against her better judgement Arielle huffed, “I don’t know what you’re talking about but with that tone, I feel like I ought to be offended.”

Craning her neck, she looked around the stout dwarf to see an array of other beings: an elf, harpy, giant, and even a hybrid that appeared half-cat. A full party. Such a scene hasn't been seen in Maliorn since well before Arielle's own birth 18 years ago. Looking around, still trying to get her bearing, she saw Clyde and Eveline off to the side, unconscious. 

Confusion started to shift into panic as the unexplained reality of her situation set in. Scrambling to her feet, Arielle pushed through her nausea and said hurriedly, "I did break the Vulpher crest. It was an accident though, it just shattered in my hand, I wasn't squeezing it or anything." Her voice was seeped with anxiety as she explained the situation.

"Here, you can have it. But I didn't break any saint seal or the like. Maliorn doesn't even have a saint, we're just a nothing province, settling happy between obscurity and unimportance." Arielle threw the knapsack at the dwarf's feet where it landed with a solid thud.

From behind, the elf approached and took the sack. Poking around inside, he declared in an almost regal manner, "This is it and it's broken." Arielle had never seen an elf in person. Maliorn was mostly home to humans and hybrids, with a giant here and there. 

The elf's blue eyes pierced her in such a way that Arielle felt naked. Squirming beneath his gaze, Arielle tried to figure out just how deep the pile of shit she had landed herself in was. She was used to pushing the boundaries, but she never broke them. She never did anything that could risk her family's livelihood.

But something told her it was approaching that level. The sword in her face is what told her to be exact. A rather clear message, not much was left to the imagination. 

"What's your name?" asked the dwarf in a not wholly unkind manner.

"Arielle, ma'am."

The dwarf chuckled, "No need to call me ma'am, Arielle. I work for a living, save those pleasantries for my elven friends, who tend to get their hands less dirty."

"Tysla, is now really the time for petty grievances," chided the elf.

"Well, Aymon, someone should've done their dishes last night."

"Tysla..."

"Fine, fine." The dwarf, Tysla, refocused and said, "Arielle, you must be confused. I don't believe you broke the seal on purpose, that's a mystery in itself, but I haven't lowered my sword because The Saint's scripture states that a broken seal always releases a demon."

"Demon?" whispered Arielle. The two blobs in the cave suddenly came to mind. No, it couldn’t be, she thought incredulously.

Tysla nodded gravely. "We don't know in what shape or form it will take, but it always binds itself to the host which in this case, is you."

"You need not wonder any longer," said the voice that Arielle knew to belong to Evol. 

"I am the demon," explained Krad.

"And I'm his partner, a saint's spirit," added Evol.

The two blobs bounced up to perch on Arielle’s shoulder, one on each side. The weight of them on her felt both like nothing and everything. Like climbing a mountain with them would be an impossible challenge, or she'd summit it faster than a elf. It was an uneasy duality, one her brain, no, her entire body was fighting to comprehend.

More importantly, she wasn't crazy and hearing voices as the party in front of her clearly saw them as well. This much was obvious because the sword that Tysla had held at Arielle's nose was now mid-swing, and the dwarf was leaning in to the close the distance, her gaze fighting to not meet Arielle's own terror-filled one. 

Krad was her target, that much was clear, and Arielle? She'd be chalked up to collateral damage.