Outside Gaderia Territory. Night.
The moon hung clean and bright, throwing two shadows across the ground, and between them steel flashed and flashed again.
"Ara, letting your mind wander in the middle of a fight is a good way to get hurt, you know."
The voice at his ear was excited, coaxing, sweet as poison, and the body dancing before his eyes was more beguiling than anything on offer in a brothel.
Rolwen found nothing at all to enjoy in it.
Because the ring blade that had just streaked past had clipped his thigh, spraying a line of blood across the grass.
At least Tutesi wasn't like the captain of Squad One, who loved his dirty tricks; there was no poison on those blades. Otherwise he really might have been kneeling at her feet after two or three exchanges.
"A formidable enemy, all right."
Ring blades were an uncommon sight on any battlefield. Held in the hand they had far less reach than a longsword, so most fighters used them as one-off throwing weapons, and even then they were difficult to control.
The one thing Rolwen couldn't work out was this: every time he batted one of Tutesi's ring blades away with his longsword, the thing changed course in midair and came curving back into her hand.
What kind of magic was that?
No. Years of hunting the Demon Race had honed a warrior's instincts, and his had grown sharp enough that he no longer needed his eyes or ears to tell whether traces of Mana lingered in the air.
This wasn't magic. Since the day he had known her, Tutesi had been a warrior. A berserker.
"Beating me at range isn't much of a victory, is it?"
Rolwen tried to bait her. He still couldn't find an opening to close the distance.
"I really do like you. Let me admire that beautiful swordwork of yours a little longer. The way you turn aside my attacks, one after another after another — it sets my heart racing."
One hand pressed to her heart through the swell of her chest, a red tongue wetting her lips, Tutesi looked utterly intoxicated in the moonlight.
"Tutesi, what I can't understand is why you wouldn't fight that member of the Demon Race. Why join hands with her and betray the organization instead?"
The woman in front of him fixed him with a stare like a viper's in the dark, and then, without warning, she began to giggle.
"Because, you see — I've had my eye on you for a very, very long time."
A chill crawled up Rolwen's spine for no reason he could name. It struck him then that being marked by Tutesi was more frightening than being eyed by Timmy would have been, if Timmy had turned out to prefer men. Tutesi's attention was the lethal kind.
"F*ck. She's insane."
All he could do now was pray that Timmy, matched against the one who was even worse than this, had found a way to break off and run.
The thought came and went, and Rolwen emptied his mind of everything else.
"Hey, human over there. Why don't we stop and talk a while? That last attack was only meant to separate you from your companion, you know."
Hovering in the air, Solitär looked down at Timmy. Something seemed to occur to her, and she dropped until her eyes were level with his, extending her invitation to chat while he stood braced for the next strike.
"Haah… haah."
Timmy dragged in air. The ferocity of the Mana swords had reduced him to running and dodging, nothing more. The sword in his hand — and the arm holding it — had gone half numb. He knew he was outmatched.
She was in the air, where ordinary attacks simply couldn't reach her, and the Mana swords covered her besides. If he leapt up to strike, he would hang there helpless, and long before his blade came down he would have been punched full of holes.
All he could do was stall until Captain Rolwen finished his own fight and came to help.
Run for it? That member of the Demon Race flew as well as any bird. What chance did two legs have?
Seeing that he only stood there with his sword up, using the reprieve to catch his breath and saying nothing, Solitär kept her harmless smile in place and asked her question. "Human, is there someone you love? Would you share it with me — what sort of feeling is love, for Humans?"
"Love talk?"
Timmy was thrown. This one wasn't like the others he had met. She understood Humans far too well.
Buying time, hunting for a flaw — he decided to be bold and pick up the thread. "Can your kind really understand human feelings at all?"
Over the years Timmy had met plenty of the Demon Race on assignment. The vast majority were silent creatures, and only when they were dying did they mouth something that sounded human, some plea for mercy. But that face of theirs never warmed, and it left no room in him for pity.
And with reason. He had watched a man spare one of them and take a knife in the ribs for it on the spot.
"Most of us can't. But there are a rare few like me who can."
Solitär's tone stayed gentle throughout, and the softness of her expression was indistinguishable from a human woman's.
"There is. There's someone I love. I met her more than twenty years ago."
It was only meant to buy time, yet saying it out loud left Timmy faintly embarrassed. Sharing his love life with one of the Demon Race, of all things.
"That sounds romantic," Solitär said, spreading her fingers to half cover her mouth, laughing softly as though genuinely charmed.
"Romantic? You understand even that?"
"A promise between a human and a human of the opposite sex to die together, that sort of thing?"
"…Close enough. A little strange, though."
She really did understand, Timmy realized.
"Then have you married her? Built a household? Had children?"
Another question dropped like a bomb on the heart of a lonely man — no, on the heart of a lifelong pining aristocrat of unrequited love. It jolted him worse than dodging Mana swords had.
"No. She and I went our separate ways. I haven't seen her once from that day to this. All I can still call to mind is a voice full of life, and that hair of hers, beautiful, green as emerald."
His voice went quiet, a little desolate. His strength had come back by now, most of it, and while he did his best to look at ease he never let his guard down for a moment.
"What a shame. Bringing it up must hurt you. I'm sorry."
"It doesn't hurt that much. If we're fated to, I believe the Goddess will let us meet again."
Watching how moved Solitär looked, Timmy nearly mistook her for a human.
"I see. It seems my estimate was off, then."
"Huh?"
The smile that had been resting on Solitär's face was gone. Timmy noticed it all at once.
"Then — if you were to die before you ever saw the one you love, knowing that would be your ending, would it grieve you terribly? Or would you be afraid, and beg me for your life?"
Cold flooded up through Timmy's body from the soles of his feet. He forced an easy smile and answered with a question of his own. "What's this supposed to be? You're joking, right? Don't you want to talk about something else for a while?"
"That's enough. Human, I talked with you a little longer only because you're weak. Now I'm going to begin my own experiment."
Before Timmy could get another word out, Mana swords began to gather again around Solitär, one after another after another — more of them than when she had been chasing him down.
"F*ck."
Timmy tightened his grip on his sword. He couldn't make sense of what this one wanted. Beneath Solitär's faint, drifting coldness lay a clear intent to kill. A Demon Hunter — and this time he really might die at the hands of the Demon Race.
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