Demonic Devourer's Development

As usual, I started executing my plan by gathering more information. In this case, I had a powerful tool for gaining it, called "interrogation". These people weren't monsters with whom I couldn't communicate. I understood their speech. They were weird, but more human than I was.

So I went to catch one.

While most of the village was still busy beating the wyvern before it could do irreparable damage to the gates, I skulked through the shadows—and there were plenty of shadows, since even at its brightest, the rainbow water didn't glow that much—towards the houses.

There were plenty of weak and old, plenty of those who didn't join the fighting, for me to pick. Like all smart weaklings, they searched for protection in strength. Women, children and elders gathered together in huddles, watching with concern but no obvious fear as their men dealt with the threat to their village.

They were prepared to defend themselves, and I was sure that even the weakest of them, full of the rainbow water, were strong. Right now, they were ready for a confrontation. So instead of attacking immediately, I scanned the misshapen faces, looking for a target.

A woman with a baby in each arm, an old man hugging a little girl, two children of indeterminable yet sex almost glued to each other… And, just a little away from everyone else, a scrawny boy of ten or eleven years. For some reason, no one was here to huddle with him. Was he an orphan? A pariah? Vulnerable and alone?

I mentally marked him as a target and scuttled a little further back into the shadows as the first protectors began to return to their families. The wyvern was dead, and someone was already skinning it. Women left their babies and toddlers to the elders to join the fray with the older children. The communal activity brought up a lot of conversation: some happy, some confused, some pure gossip.

I stayed a little to listen in. The villagers didn't know why the wyvern attacked so suddenly, but weren't too alarmed. Monster attacks on the place were rare, but not inexistent. Most were just happy to have the wyvern to eat and use for their clothes, tools and dwellings and didn't ask why it came there.

Then, I went to search for my target. The boy didn't join everyone's fan. Older people put him to errands, but after a few he run off to the edges of the village. I could understand him—it seemed that the villagers picked the worst jobs for him, despite him being just a kid.

Pariah, certainly. Well, that meant no one would miss him.

When I quietly flew to the boy's hiding place, he was sitting next to the village's wall and chewing on a piece of raw wyvern meat. Despite being absorbed in that action, he didn't stop throwing narrowed glances around, looking for threats.

But he never looked up. I floated from above him and slowly, almost gently, grabbed the boy's head. The point of my stinger rested just above his Adam's apple. Like that, upside down and wordlessly threatening the boy's life, I quietly said, "Scream and you are dead. Move and you are dead."

The boy swallowed what was in his mouth, but besides that, didn't dare to move at all. "W-who are you? What do you want?" he whispered.

"Answers. Give me the answers, and you may go." Probably. I was hungry… and meat was meat. "What is this place?"

"The village. That's the village," the boy's voice trembled. "Are you… are you an adventurer?"

I hissed through the clenched teeth. "The fewer questions you ask, the higher are your chances of ending up alive after our chat. What is that rainbow water?"

"It's holy. Holy water. The mountain gave it to us when everybody else abandoned us. The… the elder says it's the mountain's heart blood."

"What's inside the dome it comes from?"

"I don't know." When I pressed the stinger harder into the boy's skin, he jerked. "Really, I don't! No one's permitted to get in, even if they could. There're no doors."

"Useless. Then tell me at least about this village. Why you, people, are so deformed?" I looked closer at the boy. I didn't notice at first, since his head hid it, but from up close I saw he didn't have ears. Visible ones, at least. "Where are your ears?"

"It's stale blood, the chief says. We have to have children with bugmen for fresh blood, but half-breeds are nasty, too. My… my grandma was a half-breed, and I don't have ears, but at least my head is good." The boy shook so hard now, he almost stuck on my stinger by himself. "Please, let me go."

"Bugmen? Four arms, antennas, teeth like needles?"

"Yes, yes, yes. Them."

"You can actually breed with them?" I almost fell from astonishment. "You can communicate with them? They are monsters."

"Communi-what?"

"Talk. Talk with them."

"N-no. The chief, he picks the best hunters, with the best blood, and they… hunt the bugmen women and then make children with them. They don't talk."

Ah, so like that. Made sense. Still, breeding with monsters… I supposed bugmen were more mammals than insects, after all. What a strange place this village was. I guess this piece of information was something worth of acquiring; but right now, my curiosity was satisfied enough.

As for the boy… I supposed that alarming the villagers that something or someone was making their lot disappear—and even if he was a pariah, his loss would get noticed in a settlement as small as that one—wasn't worth it.

"If you speak about this encounter to anyone, I will find you again, cut off your tongue, eat it before your eyes and then skin you alive. Understood?"

"Y-yes! Yes, I understand. I will be mum like a rock."

"I will be watching. Now, don't look up." With these words, I took my stinger away.

The boy didn't move. Satisfied, I flew up and away before it realised that I wasn't in the vicinity.

It was time to come up with another plan.