Demonic Devourer's Development

"Ahhh, to see the light of sun again at last!" I took in a deep breath of fresh mountain air and enjoyed the invigorating feeling the chill of it brought me. The caves were cold, but far from a mountainside on a windy day, even if that day was, what, late spring?

The names of the months here, I couldn't bother to remember their order… since each was named as one of the bastards who call themselves gods.

"Why it's so bright?" Gi asked in a shaking voice. "My eyes… they hurt. And why's the ceiling is so far away?"

"This is the surface, and this isn't the ceiling, it's the sky. Get used to it. I told you already what you will have to do if you go blind. Adjust! Humans can do that. How many generations did your people lived in the caves? I doubt it was THAT long." I snorted. "And you don't seem to have any bugmen in your lineage."

The light wasn't Gi's only problem with coming outside. He shivered from the wind and huddled himself in his stinky leathers. Wisely, though, he didn't complain about that. I doubted he would fall sick, either way—with his boosted on rainbow water stats, his CON won't let a common cold sink its claws in him.

I kept giving him new rainbow water made with my piece of stone as we travelled, so his stats could only grow. In the future, I planned to share that power with my other followers, to boost their effectiveness in doing their following. At least, if they did something good while I was gone. Otherwise, I could rethink that idea of having followers in the first place.

It took a dozen more minutes for Gi to acclimatise. Would've been faster, I supposed, if we came around at night, but it's not like I could tell time underground. Good thing we were where we were. I got so lost in these caves… and the only dragon I found was too strong for me to eat.

That was alright, though. I already decided to return after I dump Gi on my cult and have a good rest with my girls. This time, though, I will go over the surface. With my new abilities, I was keen on hunting some Birds of Paradise, even if I needed their steel feathers even less than before now.

"Where are all these noises coming from?" Gi asked. He was squinting, and I could see that his eyes were red and inflamed, but he was looking around now, and his expression was an amusing mess of slack-jawed and fearfully tense.

"Grass. Tress. Wind. In other words, things you've never seen in your entire life before." I grinned. "Just wait until you see some actual civilisation. Come here."

When, after a brief pause for hesitating, Gi came got closer, I grabbed him by the torso with my lower set of arms and spread my wings. Gi's "Wha—" was interrupted by our take-off into the sky.

"This way we are going to get there much faster," I explained. The boy was light, if not as a feather, then still light enough for me to carry with little effort.

He was also very silent now. I glanced down at him to check if he was still breathing. He was, but barely, and his face, already bleached-white, looked almost transparent now. His eyes were closed shut, and his hands gripped mine in a death clutch.

"If you piss your pants, I will drop you," I threatened. Gi let out a soft whimper and shook his head, but whether it was an assurance that he won't or just a random tremble of fear, it was hard to tell.

The boy got better only when we stopped for the night. After our flight, Gi had a few new sunburns, but they healed fast after I let him some rainbow water to pour on them. In the darkness and on the ground, he livened up again enough to explore the surface of the mountain his tribe called holy… until he found out that we would have to fly again.

"M-master, can't we just… walk?" he pleaded with big, teary (from the first rays of sunlight) eyes. But my heart was made of steel. No, wait, my soul was made of steel. My heart was made of jelly, just like the rest of my body. Jelly could bend and quiver, but it won't break!

"Nope. Suck it up or I will leave you here and THEN you can just walk where you want."

Gi just had no other choice than to do as I said. Good for him that the city I planned to drop him at, Tinaris, wasn't farther than two day-flights. I spotted its flights up ahead just as the sun was setting.

With my lack of masking gear and the necessity of bringing Gi inside the walls, I waited for it to fall fully before I commanded Pest to mask the two of us with the dark cloud spell and flew over the wall. Gi was too busy being scared to have any reaction to his first view of the city… not to mention, he couldn't see anything through the dark cloud.

Bishop's house stood where I left it. After some contemplating, instead of sneaking into his bedroom—really, what if he slept naked, just like Yvenna? What if it was some cult thing I didn't know about? I've seen enough gross things in the caves, I didn't need one more—I knocked into his door until I heard him waking up and moving inside.

"Who's there?" he said from the other side of the door. When I closed my eyes and checked with blind sense, I found he was dressed in a long nightshirt and had a loaded crossbow in his hand. Hah.

"The one whose return you've been waiting for decades, and then for a month and a half more." I said. "Open the door, Bishop."