Zamazel stays silent. The cleric’s question has troubled him, because his facial expression went from excited to an almost expressionless mask.
“Why do you want to know?” The demon lowers his voice. “Just don’t get in their way.”
Dargothoth shakes his head while laughing shortly but loudly.
“Luck doesn’t favor us these last days, demon. We’re going to run into them somewhere in our journey here and we would rather have information about them before we meet them.”
The others almost had almost forgotten about the Reapers. Cyrzana said something about them collecting souls, but nothing more than that.
“Just don’t run around cities shouting about Reapers, okay?” Zamazel sounds troubled. “Most of us are terrified of them.”
He sighs. They’re still too far away for him to change the subject by pointing at their destination.
“When a demon dies, his soul needs to be returned to where all souls come from: the Covert Cathedral. It’s a hidden place where all demons return to when they die, where their souls are absorbed into the Sepulchre. Because it is hidden, the spirits need guidance to reach it. A Reaper leaves the Covert Cathedral when someone dies. Shortly after his death, the Reaper appears out of a crimson mist and takes the soul with him. He will ignore anything else as long as nothing stands between him and his task. Do not interact with them. Do I make myself clear? If you do, it will not stop before it has your soul as well.”
The grim story entertains the cleric, but worries the others.
“Noted”, Oslando says vigorously and he turns to Dargothoth. “We will leave them alone.”
“They don’t come for wolves?” Mero’s voice cracks, similar to that of a boy reaching puberty. “Don’t they have souls?”
Zamazel shrugs his shoulders.
“I think it works differently for beasts and such”, he says. “You have to have a Parent to be returned to the Covert Cathedral. That’s why every demon has at least one blessing of a Father or Mother. If they don’t and they die, they are taken, but are doomed to become a Faceless and wander the cathedral’s cursed halls… I don’t have anything else to say about this. Please, let’s talk about something else.”
“There isn’t much left of your camping place.”
Lyssa scratches the back of her head after looking at the trashed scene. The campfire is barely lit, the contents of a big backpack are scattered across the ground and the sticks of his tent are broken. The beige canvas is covered in dirt and is torn allover.
“Yeah, it was trampled by the mother wolf”, Zamazel answers.
He starts picking up his belongings. One of the things he picks up first is a bow.
“That’s a good looking weapon”, Bruq says. “Do you hunt?”
The demon looks up.
“Yes, just like all men of my family did. Sadly, it’s only me now. This was my father’s bow. I’m glad it’s still intact.”
The satyr smiles at him and they all walk towards Zamazel.
“And what fearsome animal were you hunting, colleague? What beast could be on the bounty list of a hunter with such a grant family lineage?”
While Bruq is too excited to find the answer in his surroundings, his sorcerer friend is more observant.
“I think I know what he hunted”, Mero says with the sound of unease in his voice, “and I think I also know why the she-wolf attacked him.”
He points at the smouldering campfire. The signs of an attack are clear: a broken chair, ashy paw prints on the tent’s canvas and a charred and bloodied spear. It’s the spear that draws the sorcerer’s attention. They can see a blackened animal, not bigger than a young puppy, pierced and burned. It’s a wolf cub, cooked above the fire, with a bite mark on one of his legs. Someone was eating the mother wolf’s young and the five adventurers have a feeling they might know who did it.
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