Fiora felt great relief as she sat in that cage, looking up at Daegal as he stood on top of it. The fact that he came to the village’s rescue surprised her, but she was eternally grateful to him for it, nonetheless. Even so, it was a bit unnerving to see a more vicious side of Daegal. He was angry, that much was clear, but he also killed with no hesitation. She didn’t blame him for disposing of that scum, but it was a little scary how easily he did so. He was far stronger than she had originally thought, and she had thought a lot.

  Daegal descended from atop the cage with rather stiff posture. He was moving slowly, nervously, like he was afraid of stepping on his own tail. He reached the back of the cage and examined the lock on it. It was made of iron and dangled in the loops of the doorframe. Daegal hooked his pointer finger in the loop of the lock, gripping the rest of it in his palm tightly. With a sharp yank downward there was snap, and the mechanism which held the lock in place was broken, allowing it to open and slide out.

  Daegal opened the cage and then paused. Naturally, Fiora was very happy to see him, but the other woman and children were cowering at the far end of the cage from him. He knew terror when he saw it, and the whimpers of the mothers as they tried to shield their children from Daegal were like needles stabbing his chest. He could not afford to interact with Fiora right now. If he did, then they might come to fear her just the same as him. Daegal simply turned and walked away at a brisk pace toward the forest, intent on disappearing into the trees once more.

  Fiora was shocked by the complete disregard that he had shown her in that moment, so much so that he managed to get some distance from the cage before she began to move. She scrambled out of the back of the wagon and had to nearly run to catch up to Daegal. She called out to him as she got closer.

  “Daegal, wait! Where are you-”

  “Don’t talk to me!” he hissed at her in a low voice without turning around or stopping.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “If they see you talking to me then they will fear you too.”

  She considered that for a moment before discarding the thought. “Daegal, you saved me, you saved my dad, you saved everyone. If there ever was a time to introduce you to the rest of the village, it would be now.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Fiora. I’m not human. They’ll never trust me, never not be afraid of me.”

  “Then how do you explain me?” she tried to argue.

  “You’re not normal,” he countered instantly.

  Her face scrunched up in mild insult, and she made a short dash forward to grab him by a few of his fingers as that was all she could grip with any firmness. Daegal’s eyes went wide with shock at her actions, and he looked around frantically to see if anyone had seen her do that. Thankfully the women and children were currently running back to the safety and the village and not paying attention to them, but Daegal could also hear the clamor of a crowd. The men had gathered their wits and were organized now. It sounded like they were heading their way.

  “Fiora, let go!”

  “No.”

  “Let go, now!” he growled out this time only for her to remain stubborn.

  “I’m not letting you run away, Daegal. They’ll always be afraid of you if you don’t talk to them right here, right now. They just need to get to know you.”

  He could tug his arm away, but he didn’t want to risk the possibility of hurting her if his claws caught on her hand when he pulled. His teeth clenched together in frustration.

  “They don’t want to know me; they’d prefer to kill me if they could!”

  “I won’t let that happen.”

  “Then they’ll kill you too and I can’t let that happen! Let, me, go!”

  “I guess you’ll just have to make a good first impression, then.”

  His mouth opened and closed a few times, searching for the right words that would make her stop this but not finding them.

  “You... You stupid, foolish girl! You’re risking your damn life on some vague hope that they might be able to think past their own terror! You truly have no sense of self-preservation at all!”

  “Yep,” she answered confidently with a smug grin, “and it got me an amazing friend.”

  He felt hopelessness at how determined she was, and somewhere beneath the frustration, touched that she would go this far for him. His ears perked up as the crowd got closer, and he saw the mob rounding the corner of a building. Most of the village was there, with some being diverted to fight the few fires that were still burning. The men had collected a combination of farming tools and other work-related implements that could be used as weapons. They could see him now, they could see her, and they could see what she was doing. At this point it didn’t matter if he ran; it would just make things worse for Fiora. He clenched his eyes shut before the tension in his shoulders gave out as he gave up.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said with a deep sigh.

  “It will be okay, Daegal, trust me.”

  He did trust her, which was the problem as it was putting them both in this dangerous situation. There was nothing he could do about it now, though, as she was in charge. She moved to his side, continuing to hold on to two of his fingers in a show of solidarity. They both watched as the crowd approached with their makeshift weapons, their faces showing a variety of emotions like fear, confusion, and anger.

  It was scary.

  He was scared.

  His heart was thumping in his chest and ringing in his ears. Everything in him wanted to run from this situation as fast as he could, but he didn’t. Fiora was risking herself, probably more than he was, by standing at his side. He couldn’t leave her, and if it turned out that they wouldn’t accept him, and by extension, her, then he would take Fiora with him and escape.

  Now that the crowd was getting closer, they started hesitating, clearly unsure about continuing to approach Daegal who stood head and shoulders above all of them with room to spare. Daegal’s posture slumped until he was looking positively meek compared to what he normally looked like. It didn’t really help anything as even slouched as he was, he terrified those who beheld him.

  There was a moment of indecision by the mob as they brandished their weapons, trying to decide amongst themselves what they should do or who would be attacking first. The crowd was parted by a frantic individual who pushed their way to the front. Emil emerged from within the group, hesitating as he was caught between his desire to rush to his daughter, and his fear of the giant creature at her side. He desperately reached out to her, pleading.

  “Fiora, come here, quickly! Get away from it!”

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  Fiora responded with a raised hand, trying to calm her father and the rest of the villagers as well. “Dad, it alright. He’s not going to hurt anyone.”

  Emil blinked in surprise, not understanding how she could say that. “What? Fiora, be reasonable! This is no time for games; just look at it for god’s sake!”

  She had hoped that her dad could see the evidence that Daegal wasn’t here to hurt them, but he was just as scared as everyone else, thought probably more for her sake than anything. It was frustrating for her, and her face showed as much as her brow dropped.

  “You look! You’re all so lost in your fears that you can’t see that he just saved us from being taken as slaves or worse! They almost killed you, Dad, and he stopped them!”

  Emil was at a loss for what to say, but the rest of the village was more than happy to fill the silence.

  “She’s lost her mind.”

  “That thing is clearly dangerous.”

  “How are we going to get rid of it?”

  “J-Just stay together. We can fight it together.”

  The squabbling voices, all arguing about how they were going to get rid of him, or how much of a monster he was, bit at his heart like carrion birds picking at a corpse. Daegal felt his chest tighten as he experienced this rejection all over again. It was then that a voice cut through the noise, rising above the others.

  “It is a demon!” A man wearing robes said. While Daegal did not know this person, Fiora instantly recognized him as Father Conrad, and she cringed as she hoped that he wouldn’t be here right now. The priest raised a condemning finger at the two of them as he continued to rant.

  “This foul creature can be nothing less than an agent of Satan himself! The beast was no doubt drawn in by the evil of those bandits, and now it seeks to corrupt the rest of us! It has already enthralled the girl to its will, and they must be expunged before any more harm comes to those of faith!” Father Conrad brandished a wooden cross at them in a warding manner. Daegal didn’t know why, but that simple bit of wood annoyed him, like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

  Fiora was quick to refute the priest’s claims. “No, that’s not why he’s here! Daegal came to save us! He doesn’t mean any of us harm, so please just stop and listen!”

  Despite her best effort to argue on his behalf, the crowd was getting riled up by the priest’s words, and her voice was being drowned out beneath the tide of voices that grew more violent with each passing moment. Fiora’s dad was more focused on protecting his daughter from the crowd, trying to divert their attention away from her and defend her character. Daegal was silent as he had been from the start, not knowing what he could possibly say in this situation, not that he thought it would have made a difference.

  As it was, his heart was racing, and his breathing was starting to elevate in panic. He started to inch backward, his feet sliding across the ground subtly, hoping to gain some distance without drawing attention to that fact. Everywhere he looked people were shouting, threatening, condemning him for crimes he had never committed. He wasn’t welcome here; he wasn’t welcome anywhere. An unwanted monster.

  He was teetering right on the edge of grabbing Fiora and running before anything bad happened, but just as his body started to tense in preparation for that, something new stopped everyone. A woman with raven black hair that had a few strands of grey starting to show in it broke from the crowd. She walked with the assistance of a simple wooden cane, compensating for a small limp in her right leg. As this woman approached, Daegal noticed that it wasn’t fear or anger that was on her face, but a sort of mystified expression, like she was seeing something out of a dream.

  “Mrs. Eira?” Fiora was just as surprised as everyone else to see a customer of her father’s strolling up to Daegal.

  Eira closed the distance between them in a casual manner, unheeding of those from the village that tried to call her back or dissuade her from continuing forward. She was completely fixated on Daegal, so much so that Daegal found it unnerving. Once she had gotten close enough, she reached out with a reverent hand, aiming to touch Daegal on his forearm.

  Daegal pulled back, taking a step away and out of her reach. She seemed perplexed by his reaction, and she took another two steps forward and tried again. He did the same thing and pulled away, and at that point, Eira decided to speak to him directly.

  “It’s okay, I know you,” she tried reassuring him, which only served to confuse. “For a long time, I questioned whether I had been delusional from all the smoke, but seeing you now, knowing you’re real, it’s reassuring. You remember me, don’t you?”

  The confusing inside of Daegal only grew. He cautiously investigated her claim, taking a hesitant sniff as he tried to recognize her in any way. There was something familiar about her, and it vaguely tickled a distant part of his brain as he dug up old memories that he would rather have left alone. She mentioned smoke, which implied fire, which brought him back to that dark day. Pieces clicked together in his mind, and he was able to make a connection to who this woman was.

  “Wait... the fire, the woman in that building...”

  She grew a gentle smile as she nodded her head. “Yes, you saved me from that fire when I was certain that I would die. At the time I was terrified of you, thinking that I might have already died and that you were there to collect the souls of the dead. However, as time passed, and it became clear that I hadn’t died, I realized that you had saved me and asked for nothing in return. Ten years went by, and I was afraid to speak of you to anyone as I thought they might label me as insane. Now you’re here, and I can tell you what I should have that fateful day.”

  She reached out again, and this time Daegal did not shy away as she gently placed her hand upon his forearm. “Thank you, truly. You are a good soul, I can tell.”

  Daegal was stunned by her words, not knowing what to think or feel at the moment. Her touch was gentle and warm, carrying the gratitude of a life spared. He had never felt something like this before, and it overwhelmed him in an instant. His vision became blurry as his eyes watered up. He panicked a little as being blinded and showing weakness in front of that crowd could have been fatal, but when he quickly wiped all four of his eyes to clear them out, he saw a very different reaction than he expected.

  The people of the village were looking at him with shock, surprise, and perhaps even a little shame as they saw how vulnerable he was in that moment. Nobody expected the ‘monster’ to cry, and now the tools in their hands felt twice as heavy. Not everyone was feeling quite so remorseful of their actions, though.

  “Are you insane!” Father Conrad exclaimed. “You are knowingly consorting with agents of hell itself!”

  Eira was not entertaining that idea in the slightest. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, Father, but I didn’t believe that spontaneously saving strangers from certain death is a sign of devilry. Also, is it not in line with good Christian morals to allow a person to prove the goodness of their soul and not be condemned by unfounded accusations?” The slight smile she wore at the end really hammered the nail into Father Conrad’s argument.

  The man sputtered a moment, clearly at a loss for what to say in retort to that. It appeared that the general hostility that was directed toward Daegal had been diminished significantly, with only embers of anger remaining within the crowd. That wasn’t to say that he was trusted, but it was more like they would tolerate him until he gave them reason not to. It was shaky ground to be standing on, but when compared to the bottomless ravine that had divided him from humanity previously, it was a fantastic situation.

  Daegal was in a daze as he tried to process everything. The angry mob that had been threatening him and Fiora mere moments ago was now shuffling about awkwardly without clear direction. This Eira woman was a fragment of his past that came back so suddenly that it hit him like a ten-ton boulder. Most importantly of all, it felt like, miraculously, that he had a connection formed with the village, no matter how small it might have been. A long-held dream, that he had thought was dead, was now a real possibility.

  He had no idea where to start.

  Thankfully, Eira had the solution for what to do in the immediate future. “I know it might be somewhat belated, but may I offer you my gratitude in some way? Perhaps I could prepare a meal that would sate your appetite?”

  “I... Uhm...” Daegal looked around at the unsure faces of the mob. If he wanted them to not see him as a threat anymore, that meant he had to make an effort to interact. He did promise Adelaide that he’d try, after all.

  “I would be... t-thankful, for your consideration,” he finally said, nervously.

  Eira smiled brightly at him. “It’s the least I can do. Come along now, I’ll show you to my house. It’s in the same spot as where you found me the first time, though it was rebuilt.”

  She grabbed him by his thumb and began to pull him along with a gentle tug. He complied with her direction, slowly walking just behind as she the crowd of villagers parted before them. Many still wore their unsure looks, but a few of the more adamant individuals scoffed or turned away with a huff as they left. Daegal shrunk a little, keeping his head down as he nervously glanced all around him, which didn’t help much as people were weirded out by his eyes.

  Fiora wasn’t with him anymore, and he looked back with a bit of panic in his eyes to see that she was left where they had been standing before. She looked at him, looked at her father standing off to the side in a stupor, and then looked back to Daegal.

  “I know where Mrs. Eira lives; I’ll join you in a minute, I promise.”

  Daegal was unsure, but he wasn’t in control of this situation anymore. The most he could do was go along with it and hope that it turned out alright. He was nervous about being alone with someone who was essentially a stranger, but more than that, he was worried about leaving Fiora by herself. He could only hope that Eira lived close enough that he could hear if something happened.