Whipping around, walking forward as if taking a casual morning stroll, was Pradip with the kukri the rusty headed man had used to fight the demon in his old hands. Looking back at the decapitated demon, a small shiver of fear and respect ran through his chest, seeing the singular, clean cut through the monstrous being's neck. Quashing those feelings Edwin ground his teeth, “What the hell, old man!”

  Continuing to the body as if nothing had happened, “I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered such a thing in all the centuries of wandering.”

  Edwin stomped forward and grabbed the pseudo-immortal by the collar, “You brought me out into this forest knowing this thing was here! Without me knowing! With absolutely no prep or even a warning about what was happening! I could’ve been killed!”

  Pradip's thin arm shot up, pushing Edwin's head backwards and with the flat of his hand lightly tapped Edwin's broken rib. The blow barely had any force behind it, but the force of it still traveled through the shorter man's abdomen, making him release the old man and violently cough.

  “You needed to be tested and this was the most effective way of assessing your skills as well as drawing out your power. From what you said, your power only manifested when you were in combat or danger.”

  Slowly standing while keeping a hand on his aching stomach, “Bullsh*t. You probably already knew what I had but you couldn’t think of a better way of drawing it out.”

  “Regardless, you did well against the Windigo. It probably won’t make the villagers like us any more, but at least they may stop suspecting us of making all those people disappear."

  In his anger, Edwin had nearly forgotten about the villagers that were still frozen in shock around them. One of the villagers shook their heads and approached the decapitated head of the demon. Dropping to his shaking knees, the man stared at the lifeless eyes in a perplexed manner but with slowly growing recognition.

  "Everyone, come over here", he called out as he pointed at the head. When a few had gathered, "Look, it's Old Man Bennet."

  Pradip remained facing forward as he whispered to Edwin, "Do you remember the story from when you first arrived?"

  Edwin pursed his lips as he recalled the whirlwind of the last few days, "Yes, the people in the village said they hadn't seen Bennet family that lived in the forest ever since it first began snowing. But in the spring, they found the home destroyed, most of the family dead and one missing."

  "And they presumed it was my people who did this", Pradip finished the thought aloud.

  The villagers looked up with a mixture of fear and mob rage, "How do we know you didn't do this?"

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The veiled man didn't answer them directly, "Thatch, when you were fighting the Windigo, what did you feel?"

  Edwin wasn't happy with Pradip but had no desire to face the wrath of an angry mob who still had sharpened sticks in their hands, "I could feel what drove its magic. It was all surrounded by fear, hunger but at the heart of it all was Desperation."

  Pradip nodded, "This particular kind of Corruption doesn't happen because of anything another person can do. I assume you had a particularly bad winter this year."

  "Yes and what of it!?", one of the villagers shouted

  "Would it also be correct that you did not have as much food this year either?"

  The mob just started shouting about why that didn't matter but Edwin assumed that because of the demon war, they would've needed to contribute grain for the war effort.

  "This demon was borne out of a desperate hunger. This kind of Corruption especially is borne from a starving person so desperate for food, they would have resorted to get it from anywhere."

  Seeing three friends die made the men afraid, seeing the demon dead made them uneasy, but the implication the veiled man made was a push too far for some of them. One of the men collapsed to his knees and released his stomach onto the leaves.

  Edwin himself looked upon the behead demon in a new light. He had witnessed what the result of such evil was like when he had seen the demonic people that Adam had Purified during the Selections. But witnessing the carnage the rest of the world outside Acolynia had to deal with. No Purification, no magic, few ways of knowing the danger so nearby. But the certainty this could happen to nearly anyone, it made Edwin feel paranoid.

  Suddenly, from the demon's body, there came a wisping darkness. The crowd took a few hurried steps away as the wisps seemed to grab at them malignantly. Edwin took a few steps backwards, never taking his eyes off the darkness. Even at a distance, he could practically taste the evil, and his skin crept with the fear and desperation he only partially felt during his battle.

  "And now, the demon's remaining magic will escape to the Conceptual demon it most resembles, as their Corruption dictates."

  The rusty headed man recalled the discussion between him and Ilphas. The Conceptual Demons. The living ideals of every kind of evil given physical form. As Pradip explained so succintly, whatever magic was left was taxed towards the most closely similar evil Conceptual, giving it all the more presence.

  "Thatch, do you recall how you were able to sense this demon's magic during your battle", Edwin nodded in response, "Do you also remember how you could almost reach out and touch it. How you could feel its very core?"

  Edwin ran his tongue overtop his teeth at the uncomfortable feeling the darkness gave him, "Yes, it was like digging through soil to find how deep a weed goes."

  Pradip nodded, "Try to recall that feeling, and reach out your hand towards the darkness."

  Taking a careful breath because of his broken rib, Edwin felt the darkness. He could once again sense every individual form of evil he had explored when the demon first attacked him. He raised up his hand, sorting through it all and through the haze, he once again arrived at that word that existed at the center of the demon's magic, Desperation.

  Pradip nodded, "This is the time."

  Clenching his fist, the dark tendrils let out its shriek one more time. Except this time, it wasn’t the cry of a beast looking to strike fear into the hearts of prey, but rather the pitiable screech of a dying animal. In a flash, like a mist being blown by a strong wind, the dark tendrils vanished. Observing the dead body, Thatch noted that the areas on its body that he struck rather than used the weapon, they weren’t just hurt, they were damaged. Its knee wasn’t just broken, it was shattered. And the bicep he punched had a massive welt. Edwin felt his extra sense activating and he focused it on the body and he felt-

  "Nothing", Pradip said in a reverent tone.